Night, Neon

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Already Juliana is carrying herself with dignity, precision. She knows that there are individuals in her family, and among her relatives, who have never predicted happiness for her; and now she will refute them. Her body will refute them.

  Luminous, lighted from within, like one of those fleshy apricot-colored candles whose wicks, as they burn, descend inside the waxen candles, exuding a warmly mysterious, beautiful light. Taking care driving home from the clinic, braking at yellow lights she’d have blithely ignored the day before. Stopping at stop signs on residential streets with no traffic, which she’d certainly have ignored.

  Never what you’d call a fleshy girl, lanky-limbed, tomboyish, now she imagines that she can feel her body becoming womanly. Small breasts becoming heavier, swollen and tender, and the nipples exquisitely sensitive, she hears herself laugh wildly in embarrassment.

  Oh—is this me, Juliana? Not remotely me!

  She will overwhelm her lover with love. Unneurotic, forthright, mammalian love, which Patrick has wistfully hoped for from Juliana, which Juliana has not been able to provide, not quite yet.

  Pregnant women are the most beautiful women.

  I am the happiest man alive.

  Almost, Juliana can hear him: exactly Patrick’s manner of speaking.

  In his mouth, the most familiar, banal speech is given a new meaning, for Patrick speaks only what he believes.

  Unlike (most) other men.

  (Most) other men whom Juliana has known.

  Oh, she is excited! An excitement shading into anxiety, so keen.

  The way, on Front Street, ordinarily a street of no distinction, darkened store windows are reflecting the sun, about to disappear at the horizon in a watercolor wash of exquisite red-orange, as in a painting by Winslow Homer.

  And the first headlights! And lights coming on inside buildings, houses. And the sky still glowering bright overhead. L’heure bleu.

  Blue neon at the shadow end of a block—Blue Moon Café.

  By day, neon is cheap, sleazy. You don’t give neon a second glance by day.

  But it’s dusk now. Dingy blue neon in a café window competing with cruder neon signs advertising beer is a hook in the heart.

  “Oh, God.”

  Her mouth has gone dry, she feels such yearning. She realizes, she has been so lonely.

  Living with Patrick, who is so good to Juliana, who has no idea who she is, so lonely.

  What has she done?—she has driven around the block.

  She has not driven past the Blue Moon Café, she has circled the block to approach the Blue Moon Café a second time.

  But no, better not, wait to celebrate with the baby’s father. That is the sensible thing to do, and Juliana is a sensible young woman.

  Front Street is a part of the city still new to her. She and Patrick had moved into an old redbrick row house on Mill Street, on a partially gentrified block, just one month before.

  Derelict waterfront area on the Delaware River. Warehouses, small, shuttered factories, mills. Abandoned freight cars covered in graffiti, like filigree. Yet on South Main and Front Street there are refurbished brick row houses—millworkers’ homes back in the early twentieth century. There are antique shops, secondhand furniture stores, clothing consignment shops, Goodwill, a framing shop, art galleries.

  Juliana is more adventurous than Patrick. Roaming through secondhand furniture stores, fabric shops. Even among the castoffs of Goodwill, her taste is exquisite, Patrick marvels at the bargains she has discovered and brought home in triumph to sand, repaint.

  A small upstairs room adjacent to their bedroom. They will paint it rosy-pink (if a girl), robin’s egg blue (if a boy).

  Stars on the ceiling Juliana will paint. Maybe a few sparkly sequins embedded in the stars, like the sequins on her tote bag.

  How good Juliana is at small, tender, caring tasks: she vows.

  She’d suspected that she was pregnant of course. Has known, the drugstore test twice taken in secret, positive. But needing a confirmation, a proper examination, and a due date: July 11.

  Until she tells Patrick, it is not quite real to her. Guess when it is—our due date!

  Something with which to surprise others.

  Juliana is feeling dry-mouthed, edgy. Can it be—already her clothes feel too tight? Beside her on the passenger’s seat is a bottle of Evian water, but it isn’t water she craves. Nooo.

  Startled eyes in the rearview mirror. Juliana is surprising herself now, as (she thinks with satisfaction) she will surprise her mother and sisters, who’d predicted unhappiness for her, unable to be faithful to a man, unable not to lapse into her bad habits …

  Astonishing to her, the birth date has been established. An actual date noted by the nurse-practitioner at the clinic. The child-to-be is the size of a comma …

  It has been largely unspoken between Patrick and Juliana, they will be married if/when she becomes pregnant. They are deeply in love—(at least Patrick thinks so)—and Patrick wants children, he has said. And Juliana too, of course Juliana wants children. She has heard herself say.

  Marrying is only logical, practical. Neither is so young—Juliana is twenty-nine, Patrick thirty-one. Juliana thinks of thirty as a kind of waterfall: once you plunge over those falls, you are gone. On your way to gone. Badly she wants the firmness, the security of marriage. Knowing that as you descend a flight of steps, each step is firm, will hold your weight and not collapse beneath it.

  The next step in their lives, indeed. As moving into a ruin of a town house was the next step. Debris they’d swept from the upstairs rooms, down the steep staircase in a flurry of dust that set them sneezing, laughing. Stained tumorous wallpaper they’d stripped and flung into piles peaked like tents. Tearing up faded and filthy linoleum in the kitchen. Dangling electrical cords, broken wall switches, hardwood floors looking as if someone had dragged barbed wire across them. A kind of madness had come over them, a fever to strip the house of its former tenants, who’d let the property lapse into such decay that a practically penniless young couple could acquire it with a loan from relatives and a mortgage.

  Watch us! We own this.

  Last winter she’d ceased using birth control. Must be, then, she tells herself, she wants a child. Since she has given up drinking, she has been so lonely, it’s a loneliness that begins in the mouth, a terrible thirst and a hunger, of which it is impossible to speak to anyone who doesn’t understand.

  It isn’t that you yearn for a child, nor even to be pregnant, but to accomplish a feat small enough to have been accomplished by so many without effort at all through the millennia—in short, the history of the world: increase and multiply.

  It’s not quite six o’clock. She is not late returning home, will not be late for another hour at least. And if Patrick is not back, she will not be late until he is there, in the kitchen, preparing the evening meal, always something of an improvisation, a joint project that has become a nightly ritual: rich Italian sauces, special olive oil, capers, fine-cut onions, fresh tomatoes, fresh-made pasta from the Italian food store.

  Blue Moon Café. All neon by night is exciting to Juliana, but blue neon most.

  The earliest neon in Juliana’s life. When she’d been a young girl.

  That café, too: Blue Moon.

  Ridiculous, of course. Juliana isn’t a sentimental person, Juliana knows better.

  Really, she hasn’t time to stop for a drink. She has the (secret) ice pick with her of course, but she no longer has any wish to use it.

  Her old life, her life then—she has finished that life.

  She is with Patrick now. She is pregnant now.

  Still, since moving into their new home a few blocks away, Juliana has been curious about the Blue Moon Café. You wonder if a place like this is an authentic bar, an old neighborhood tavern refurbished, or if it’s a shallow, improvised place selling endive salads, sautéed tofu, kale smoothies, sparkling water, a few wines and novelty beers, no hard liquor.

  If the atm
osphere inside is high-polished hardwood floor or old scuffed tile, linoleum. If there’s dim lighting, but not candlelight. Bright or shadowy, just enough neon, not overbright.

  In a proper bar there’s a balance between bright and overbright.

  There’s another bar, or tavern, on the Delaware River, a mile or so away, that has intrigued Juliana, but (of course) she has never investigated it. To do so would mean going miles out of her way.

  The Blue Moon Café is on her way. Driving home on Front Street.

  Juliana recalls having heard, something had happened to a woman in that other tavern recently. Nineteen years old, disappeared.

  Not the Blue Moon Café, however.

  In the street, Juliana has paused, car engine idling. The interior of the café appears to be dim, smoky. Yes there is a bar, just visible. Working-class place, neighborhood tavern, unlike the Blue Moon Café in her hometown, which was located in a strip mall on a state highway at the edge of town. And smaller than that café and not crowded, though (she’s thinking) it’s a weekday evening, still early. By eleven p.m. the air will be dense in the Blue Moon, thrilling.

  By eleven p.m. she will be asleep. Her days begin early, before dawn in this season. Her work is erratically scheduled, unlike Patrick’s; he is a full-time attorney in a suburban firm across the river, Juliana works part-time at the State of New Jersey Legal Aid office.

  Both Patrick and Juliana have law degrees from the same law school: Rutgers-Newark.

  He has the full-time job, a strong promise of permanent employment. Juliana has something lesser, but she has no complaints.

  Parking on Front Street would be difficult in any case, vehicles on both sides of the narrow street, no parking lot (that she can see) beside or behind the Blue Moon Café.

  Driving on. She isn’t tempted. Buoyed by happiness, like one borne along by a swift current, unable to register where she is and who she is and why—as when she wakes from troubled dreams to take solace in the knowledge that she is finally with a man, a companion, who adores her without needing to know her.

  Thinking—It is all that I want. Nothing more.

  She is feeling proud of herself now. Not giving in, no drinking. Not a single drink in—how long?—almost eighteen months. And now that there’s an official due date, certainly not.

  2.

  Blue Moon in another state: Pennsylvania. Another lifetime. She’d been a high school kid, sixteen. Try to tell Juliana Regan anything, wouldn’t listen. Monday mornings you’d hear wild tales of the Blue Moon, which wasn’t any kind of café, just a roadside tavern out Route 33. Dreamy with envy hearing of girls her age who went out with guys in their twenties at the Blue Moon and other taverns by the lakes.

  And then, one summer night, a Saturday night, Juliana was one of these.

  Not that it had been planned, it had not. More like an accident, where one thing happens and then another, and then another. But you could not guess how the first thing that happens could lead to the last in a succession of things that happen. In any case Juliana wasn’t one to plan, had no car of her own and no way to transport herself. She had (girl) friends who had cars, or rather access to cars, but sometimes it happened that her friends drifted away and Julie (as they called her) was left behind. Or in her heedlessness Julie drifted away and was left behind. At the Blue Moon Tavern there was a parking lot of coarse gravel, she’d recall stones in her sandals, between her toes, hurting like hell. Doors of vehicles slamming, car radios abruptly silenced. It was August, she’d been at one of the lakes with her friends. In a halter top, short shorts, bare midriff, sandals. Chestnut-brown ponytail straggling down her back. Older guys, graduated from the high school a few years before, she knew their names and faces, but they didn’t know her.

  A boy named Carson, who went to Colgate. Sleek as a seal, his hair combed back from a high, blunt forehead, wet-flashing incisors, his fraternity at Colgate was Deke. Julie was too young to drink even beer, but in the confusion no one seemed to notice, or to care.

  Too young for the crowd at the Blue Moon, but Julie knew to be impressed by Deke.

  Talk of guys at Colgate inviting girls from the high school for fraternity weekends. Dazzling tales, dreamy tales, Julie was sick with envy, lavishing red lipstick on her mouth, critically eyeing herself in a restroom mirror.

  Also they were smoking dope. In the parking lot, but (for a while) in the tavern, too. She wasn’t accustomed to smoking anything stronger than cigarettes. She was dizzy, excited. What’s meant by high? Dreamy/sleepy feeling. Wanting to snuggle, kiss. Wanting to feel a guy’s arms around her. Strong, protective. Her face was flushed, sunburnt. Damned sunscreen had washed off, she’d been in the water. Two beers, lukewarm. Trying not to belch, giggling. Ticklish!—where Carson was trying to carry her, “walk” her, gripping her underarms. He’d brought her somewhere, vaguely she’d let him kiss her. Some privacy they needed, he was saying. The other girls were older, indifferent to Julie. Not her friends. Resenting her. Where were Julie’s friends—brought her to the Blue Moon and ditched her. No more idea how to kiss than a baby, just let whoever it was, the Deke, or anyway said he was Deke, kiss and suck at her mouth, try to stick his beery tongue into her mouth, but she balked, giggling and gagging. Outside in somebody’s car, she’d felt his hands on her, hard. Saying Just cool it, okay. Nothing to panic about, just cool it Junie. Her name in his mouth a wrong name, though uttering Junie as if he didn’t think much of the name, or her.

  Then he was trying to straddle her in the back seat of the car, yanking at her shorts, beer breath in her face. How quickly this was happening. Julie panicked, pushed away his hands, crying. Managed to get the door open, half fell out of the car, and ran, ran the way a child might run, wet-faced, nose running, he’d run after her, furious and disgusted, cursing, chasing her through the parking lot, one of her sandals lost. Oh, her wounded foot! Panting, crouching beside a stinking Dumpster. An alley behind the Blue Moon Tavern, she ran to hide, like a terrified animal behind a garage, shivering and trying not to sob.

  Behind her, the boy was calling in a lowered voice of drunken exasperation—June! Ju-nie! Hey c’mon, nobody’s gonna hurt you Jun-ie.

  His friends were following him, telling him to cool it. Shouts were exchanged, profanities. Like a rabbit she waited, very still as the predator sniffs the air. But she was upwind. He couldn’t smell her. Not her panic sweat, the reek of her underarms. In crazy exhilaration her heart beat. Thinking—If I can get back home. This once. If You will let me, God.

  She would tell herself later—I had no weapon. Not a thing …

  Long after the guys had driven away, yelling and jeering, she’d remained in hiding behind the Dumpster. All the while squatting. Her body was covered in a cold, oozing, oily sweat of shame, her legs ached painfully. And finally she limped back home. Two miles. One shoe on, one shoe off. Adrenaline coursed through her veins, Goddamn she would do this. She would get back home, she would save herself, and no one would know, or almost no one. Managed to slip into the house by the back door. They were watching TV downstairs in the basement. Upstairs in her room, panting and reeling with exhaustion, shame. Bathing in a hot bath. Which was not something Julie ever did—run a bath. Showers, maybe three times a week. Save on water, save on shampoo, d’you think we’re rich? Out of the tub and taking care to clean it so that no one would know. No one would guess. His hands on her breasts had hurt, bruises were emerging in the pale skin. Staring at herself in the mirror with a kind of longing, trying to recall what she’d looked like earlier that day, the quick, bright smile, hopeful smile, always so hopeful, naïve. Recalling that afternoon when her friends had come to get her, the car at the curb, horn tapped. Or maybe they weren’t her friends. If she could be that girl again. But no, could not. But the guy, the Deke from Colgate—he hadn’t raped her. Though he’d boast—something. Grabbed at her between the legs, she’d kicked out fiercely and frantically. He’d had to retreat, cursing. Earlier, crowded into the booth, he’d been la
ughing at silly things she’d said, high on dope and beer, in her high-pitched little-girl voice that made her daddy love her, but when guys laugh, you know they are going to hurt you. Guys’ laughter was like barking. Hurts your ears, it’s a kind of warning. She’d been shrewd taking alleys home. Desperate not to be seen. Not hitching a ride. Saturday night, disheveled and dazed and hoping to hitch a ride, cops might’ve picked her up too. God, if you spare me. I promise …

  A wild fantasy, she’d had something with her. To protect her. A knife, an ice pick. Even a screwdriver, sharp at the end.

  Something from the house. Kitchen, toolshed.

  Static in her head, as in the house. Like silence that has been roughly shaken. Her mother and her father not speaking to each other at this time, and the silence between them sharper than the voices of her friends’ parents. Her father’s drinking, that was the quarrel. Or maybe not the drinking, but what the drinking meant, that her mother had to contend with. So (maybe) Daddy wasn’t home. Just her mother and her younger brother, and (maybe) her brother wasn’t home either, probably with friends playing video games.

  So it was her mother and her sister watching TV downstairs. Her mother hadn’t heard her return, but eventually her mother came upstairs, surprised to see her daughter with sleek wet hair, fresh-bathed, not sunburnt and disheveled and smelling of her body as you’d expect. And Juliana tells her mother she’d come home early, explaining that she hadn’t felt so good at the lake, thought it might be cramps starting (which is so, so embarrassing), lucky that her friend Irene didn’t want to stay longer at the lake either, the girls got a ride back home, glibly the lie comes to Juliana, that’s why she is home early, she’s taken ibuprofen (which is what her mother always gives her for cramps), sort of collapsed on her bed and slept and only just woke up. She’s had a bath, she’d felt so filthy from the lake and sand, sweating in the sun. The mother sees the dilated pupils (maybe) but can’t smell the Deke’s sweat, which has been scrubbed away. If the Deke had (what was it called?—some ugly word) ejaculated on the daughter, can’t smell that either. Can’t see bruises beginning to emerge on the daughter’s shoulders, arms, thighs. The daughter is in her pajamas, kitten-print cotton pj’s cool against sunburnt skin. The mother sees the baffled hurt in the daughter’s face but decides to believe the daughter claiming to have been home for hours on this Saturday night in summer.