Expensive People

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Dr. Muggeridge was now saying, “And don't you think, then, that you boys and girls should feel free to discuss these matters with one another? Particularly those of you who are already quite intimate, or who are even thinking toward marriages. Yes, I know there are some of you here,” she said, smiling, “and I know there are others of you who have had sex without marriage in mind, and I don't make any distinction between you. Wouldn't it be helpful for you to know as much as possible about each other, about your feelings and worries? Wouldn't this help communication later, when you're married? Then you could avoid the problems your parents have.”

  A girl said, “Dr. Muggeridge, can I say something? It's funny, but… but this talk tonight has done me a lot of good. It really has. My mother would never talk to me like this. It's a real experience.”

  “And this is the tragedy, boys and girls, the tragedy of noncommunication. Think of our culture—the advertisements, the intensely stimulating movies, your popular dances and the clothes you wear. You must come to grips with this environment and conquer it; otherwise it will conquer you. We must demand of the adults of America that they face up to the realities of the world they have created. There is no room for squeamish hypocrisy. Did you know, boys and girls, that in any given group of young people a certain percentage of the girls will have unwanted pregnancies, and a certain percentage of all will have a venereal disease? Everyone knows that, but no parents will face up to the fact that their children may go into these statistics. Were I a parent myself, I would insist that my children come to me with any and all questions they have. There would be no red faces, no coughing spells, nothing except rational, wholesome talk. Sex is not a tabooed subject, boys and girls. It is not unhealthy and dirty. Sex should be discussed openly anywhere, in Sunday school, in classrooms, as well as in school lavatories”—laughter of a spontaneous sort—”and even at the dinner table.”

  “But, Dr. Muggeridge,” a girl said, “have you ever talked to adults on this subject?”

  “My dear, I will tell you a secret,” Dr. Muggeridge said sadly.

  “Whenever I offer a talk like this, it is precisely those parents who need it most who stay away. The open-minded parents who come are rarely in need of my advice—and, I must say, there are very, very few of these who do come. I think this points back to something we said earlier, the fear adults have toward sex.”

  “Oh, Dr. Muggeridge,” a boy said, “they did show a movie at our school a while back. About reproduction and stuff like that.”

  “Shown to which grades?”

  “Freshmen.”

  “A bit late, wasn't it?” Dr. Muggeridge snapped. “By that time many of you had no doubt conducted your own experiments—absolutely unknown to your parents and teachers, however.”

  A few faces reddened. I was leaning forward, my elbows on my knees and my hands encircling part of my face. Someone put his hand up, and I closed my eyes, forcing my mind off. At first there was nothing. Then I made out the image of Nada, a few years back. She and Father had given a party but it was one of their unwise parties, a mingling of Brookfield people and a few stragglers from somewhere else, an awkward group of people who were Nada's friends.

  It had been a poolside party, and I followed Nada and a man (a “composer”) around the side of the house and hid in some evergreens while I eavesdropped. And this talk stayed in my mind for many months: Nada told him that if he didn't like her guests he could go to hell, and he told Nada she had become a ridiculous person, and Nada told him in a furious whisper that he was a bastard, that his suit was cheap and ready-made and that everyone, everyone, had seen that his shoes were brown, in the first instant everyone had seen that, goddam them! She began to cry in ugly, jagged gasps. “What do you want from me?” she said. “I'm trying to survive. Should I sink down in the dump heap and suffocate, like my people, my ancestors, everybody's ancestors? Most of the world is swimming in a cesspool, trying to keep their heads up, and I'm sick of it, I'm sick of knowing it, God, how I'm sick of living and thinking and being what I am! But I won't live any other way. This is heaven. This is heaven, I've found it, they don't torture you or back you in ovens here, in 1960—what more can we ask? Our ancestors tortured other people or were tortured themselves, or both. Well, I am Natashya Everett and I am out of history, I'm clean of its stink and crap, and there is no one to thank for it, no one but myself and good luck. You son-of-a-bitch, to criticize me for being out of the crap pile! To criticize me for not suffocating in it!”

  They were silent. Then the man (his face is a complete blank to me) slid his arm around Nada's shoulders, and she did a strange thing, she let her head fall back against him as if they were old, old friends, when I'd never even seen him before! And he seemed about to kiss her on the mouth, but she turned aside a little and somehow, perhaps with an indolent gesture of her hand, indicated that he should kiss her throat instead, which he did, while I stared from out of the evergreens and my eyeballs pounded. I was eight.

  Gustave prodded me. “You all right?” he said. I blushed and nodded and sat back in my seat.

  The discussion had ranged onto something else. A boy with purplish acne was saying loudly, “Yes, some kids at my school had pictures like that. When the teacher caught them she was afraid to do anything, she just hushed it up.”

  “Well, now, she was afraid, poor thing, to admit such things existed,” Dr. Muggeridge said brightly. “Anyway, it's my personal feeling that anyone who resorts to pornography is a wee bit pathetic. What do you think? After all, normal people exercise their desires in normal ways. I think we should all be tremendously sorry for people who use pornography, just as we are for homosexuals and other perverts who are just plain sick people. Let's all help them, boys and girls, instead of pretending they don't exist! And you all know boys and girls your own age who are inclined toward abnormality. I don't mean just boys with dirty pictures but also the opposite, boys who show no interest at all in sex, and girls who show a morbid disinterest in boys. We have to admit our impulses and curiosities about this, or we are being hypocritical like most of the adult population of America. What do you think? You all, I suppose, know unfortunate boys and girls who have reached sixth grade already without admitting the slightest interest in sex, don't you?”

  I shifted guiltily in my seat.

  A girl raised her hand. “What about younger brothers and sisters?” she said. “What if you can see how your kid sister, for instance, is really out of it—I mean, she just doesn't know anything—should you maybe talk with her and bring things kind of out in the open?”

  “But how can you, if your parents are against it?” Dr. Muggeridge said.

  This was true. There was silence for a few seconds, but not a dull silence. I could feel everyone thinking excitedly. Another hand went up and a girl said, “I guess the question most of us girls want to ask you, Dr. Muggeridge, is this—and I'm really serious—how do you tell a boy to stop being fresh?”

  “Boys,” said Dr. Muggeridge with a smile, “what would you advise?”

  “Just say so,” declared a boy.

  “A slap wouldn't hurt either,” said another.

  “No, but some boys won't stop anyway. They just won't stop,” the girl said, red-faced. “Why are boys like that, Dr. Muggeridge? Sometimes they just get so nasty. And society never blames them either. It just blames the girl.”

  “Now you are talking, my dear, about the notorious double standard,” Dr. Muggeridge said as if this were a favorite topic. “This means that society expects highly moral behavior of its young women and looks the other way when its young men do as they please. Of course this is grossly unfair. But our society is changing, as you know. I think this more than anything else is what is bugging your parents. They expect you girls to be dainty and pure, like their grandmothers. Even the most flagrantly immoral boys expect their wives to be pure when they decide to marry … finally!” (A ripple of laughter.) “But our society is changing so rapidly that there will be a time when gir
ls will have exactly as much freedom as boys.”

  “Dr. Muggeridge,” said a girl, “some people think that if you're going to get married it's all right—I mean, if you're engaged or going steady or something. What is your opinion on this?”

  “My dear, you have misjudged me if you think I have any opinions on this subject other than the good healthy one of believing that problems should be aired. I would not dream of forcing my moral standards on anyone else. Some people will argue that engaged couples have every right to go to bed together, others argue that an engagement should be entered into only afierthis kind of experimentation. I do not give any particular advice. This sort of thing must be worked out between the two young people themselves.”

  “Dr. Muggeridge,” said a girl, “what about a kiss on the first date? Is that bad, or what?”

  “Some people go all the way on the first date,” Dr. Muggeridge said. “It's just a question of quality, not quantity, don't you think so? Again, discussion is called for.”

  “Dr. Muggeridge,” said a girl, “what about abortion? Do you think that's a good solution to an unwanted pregnancy, or what?”

  “There are many opinions concerning abortion. The old-fashioned religious belief was that it was a crime, and it is still a crime in many states. However, if we look at the situation objectively and scientifically, it is clear that a couple, faced with an unwanted pregnancy, may make the decision themselves about what to do. I personally believe that marriage in such circumstances is a poor solution. For one thing, it would cut down severely on your youthful experiences in the world, to be married in your teens. Think of the fun you'd miss out on, the dates and dances! And it suggests that sex is something very, very serious and not just a normal part of life, something to enjoy …”

  “Where are you going?” Gustave whispered.

  “Out,” I said.

  I left the auditorium, which was so hot I felt sick. But outside in the corridor, and outside in the parking lot where I was sick to my stomach, it was just as hot. My clothes were drenched with sweat.

  7

  And my mad spell in the flower bed came about like this: I was walking along in a ringing, singing daze of dust particles, thinking of Dr. Muggeridge of the night before and her upraised, kindly, blighting hand pronouncing my doom, not to mention Nada or rather Nada's absence when I finally got home (Mrs. Hofstadter had been an hour late and we had waited on the school steps. She had burst into tears, seeing how wearily Gustave got to his feet, and for some reason had begun to attack my mother: “I don't know who Natashya is, and nobody knows, nobody, and your father's family do not exist in Philadelphia society no matter how much money they have. And at one of your dinner parties I saw lipstick marks on my glass, my supposedly clean glass just brought in from the dishwasher …”) when something happened to me.

  It was terrifying but somehow wonderful. It was like a bolt of lightning (that marvelous metaphor!) that flashed down upon me and would have split my skull in two except for my knowing enough to bend with the blow.

  Some safety device in my brain melted away and let all of paradise rush loose. I was on my way home from school, which lasted most of the morning, and I was crossing the village green and just passing the Cedar Grove Bank of the Republic when this flash of lightning freed me. You must understand that all morning, all the night before, I had been in a kind of slumber. I could hear things well enough— sometimes too well—and I had been able to do an absurdly simple problem in division up at the board, but… but I had not been awake. Then, suddenly, I did awake. It happened that quickly. An overpowering fury rose in me, and I jumped into the flower bed so neatly kept up by the bank (a bed of pansies, snapdragons, little furry, fuzzy white border flowers) and began kicking at them. I kicked violently, madly, and as I kicked their tiny faces a feeling of soaring happiness filled my hollow little chest. I muttered something, but it was not “Take that! Take that!”; I don't know what it was. I couldn't hear myself, I wasn't interested in hearing myself, I was not aware of hearing anything. And then I was lying in the flower bed, groveling around and still kicking, fighting, scratching, even tearing with my teeth, the fury let loose in my body ringing in every muscle and giving me that holy strength that was not truly mine.

  My panting sobs slowed and I heard someone whisper, “Let him alone, don't say anything. He could sue.” A boy my own age was cautioning a younger boy. And behind and around them were many Cedar Grove ladies staring in amazement.

  A young policeman came to the very edge of the flower bed and bent to look at me. “Did you lose something, Son?”

  I was still panting violently.

  “What did you lose, Son? Maybe I can help you. Money? Keys?” He was a cautious policeman; he knew enough not to touch me. I lay there, my heart pounding, and waited. The policeman motioned politely for everyone to disperse—”disperse” is the word he was thinking, I am sure—and I sat up, still panting, and finally I got to my feet.

  “I hope it wasn't anything important,” the policeman said.

  I stepped out of the circle of ruined flowers. Someone from the bank was standing nearby, smiling. “It's quite all right, officer. Quite all right, just an accident. Did you find what you were looking for, Son?”

  I nodded and began to walk away. It seemed incredible to me that they would let me go … but yes, they did, they let me go! And though many clean people in the village noted my filthy clothes and tear-streaked, mud-streaked face, of course no one said anything. As I walked home the memory of that devastating flame began to fade and I lapsed once more into my slumberous state … until I found myself opening the side door of a house that wasn't ours but had once been ours (our former Cedar Grove house of years back), and this mistake kept me moderately awake until I got to our real home, which was the big long elegant one on Labyrinth Drive that seemed to promise so much.

  Nada was not home. Father was not home. Libby was ironing in the basement—I could smell something scorching. I ran upstairs and went to my room, and from under my bed I pulled the soiled sheet in which my rifle was wrapped.

  8

  It was a deer rifle that I thought might bio w up in my face if I ever used it. It had a telescopic sight attached to its barrel, and this was the most interesting thing about it. I lay on my bed and aimed the gun in various directions, just to be able to look through the telescope. The gun was a little heavy. Nothing about its sleek, cheap wood and its dull barrel suggested the power it had, and the secrecy of its power frightened me a little. The gun was such a still, quiet object.

  I went to my window and looked out through the telescope. Everything was brought up close, but it was rather fuzzy. The lens might have been smudged from my wet fingers. I swung the barrel back and forth and saw ordinary Labyrinth Drive sights: the woman next door, pretty and hurried in white high-heeled shoes and pink suit, was instructing her colored maid in the art of watering roses—the woman tripped daintily to a bush, pointed, and the maid followed and squirted water on that bush from a garden hose, then they went to another bush,and to yet another. There was something beautiful about that sight. Then, across the street, the Cedar Grove Green Carpet Lawn Service was at work. The telescope didn't bring the men up close enough so that I could really see their faces. It brought them to me in a kind of haze, not quite real but not imaginary either, and it pleased me to think of how they existed both for themselves and for me, their spy. The Cedar Grove Green Carpet Lawn Service was made up of a big foreman who did nothing but smoke and walk from one part of the enormous lawn to another, and a crew of surly, sullen white men who were too tanned to be happy, with overlong hair and sweat-drenched clothes. The foreman could talk to any housewife charmingly, but to his men he did not talk at all. It was clear that they all hated one another. I had to admire the foreman's empty, blank muscular face. It occurred to me that I could pull the trigger of my deer rifle and bring him down, but that would be cruel, and anyway I did not want to hurt anyone; I certainly did not want to kill, so I
thought then—that day. I sat and watched a slow procession of trucks pass by: laundry truck, flower-delivery truck, TV-repair truck, liquor-store truck, plumber's truck, air-conditioner-repair truck …

  And down the street was the Cedar Grove Sprawater Service, fixing someone's sprinkling system. All day, every day, these little trucks were parked in front of homes. But these men were too far away. I could not see them well, and probably if I pulled the trigger nothing would happen. I didn't know much about guns and I still don't. Do bullets drop fast? Should you aim higher than your target, and how much higher? The perfunctory instruction sheet that came with my rifle did not tell much. I turned the gun up into the sky and stared dizzily into nothing, nothing. It did not seem possible that anything would ever be within the range of my weapon, of any weapon of mine. Wouldn't the gun blow up in my face if I ever dared pull the trigger?

  9

  That night I heard them arguing, but I must have been a changed boy because I really did not creep out of my room to hear. I did not have to hear. Just as the telescope brought sights nearer to me, so did my strange new peacefulness tell me that I had heard this already, I did not need to hear it again. How could they surprise me? When I was a child I needed to hear every ugly word and, if possible, I needed to see Nada's face distorted with hatred and Father's with rage, but now, now at eleven, I didn't need to hear or see them anymore. I knew.

  It did me no good to play the Thinking Game at these times. The Thinking Game helped if I was sinking so deeply into inertia that I was afraid I might die, then I would seize upon some forlorn trivial memory, of a shoe, of one of Nada's rings, or of the sheet music on the piano (just which specific pieces were out?). But the Thinking Game was no good when Nada and Father argued, because I did not want to stay awake at such times. Better to sleep. Better not to hear Nada's upraised, horrified voice, which did not predict pain or even horror but only her own fury, and better not to hear Father's bellow, because in the end they would go off to bed, each to his own bed, and they would sleep while I lay awake.