Wonderland

by Joyce Carol Oates

  She laughed.

  Jesse smiled.

  “Let me come over tomorrow at noon,” Jesse said.

  “Over where? Here? But how do you know where I live?” she said.

  “I could meet you somewhere else then.”

  “All right, for half an hour. All right.”

  “Thank you,” Jesse said weakly.

  They arranged a meeting, and after he hung up he grimaced at his reflection in the door of the telephone booth. A surreptitious, criminal face, Jesse’s intangible face, as smeared as his soul. No clarity to this, to his pounding heart. No dignity to it. Adultery. Adultery. He wanted to remember this feeling of degradation, of shame; it would help him to dislike Reva.

  He ran from the telephone booth to check on Bruce Dahl: no change. Tubes, wheezing breath, ashen skin. He talked to the nurse on duty, who told him that Mrs. Dahl was on her way—she’d gone home for a few hours—and Jesse thought that he must escape quickly or he would have to talk to her, no way to avoid a fifteen-minute session of hysteria. But as he thought this he deliberately stayed behind, talking to the nurse, giving her orders to call him at once if anything went wrong … he deliberately lingered until it was too late and Mrs. Dahl rushed into the room, her coat unbuttoned. Jesse was thankful for the long white clinical coat he wore. It seemed to protect him from the flurry of such women, such grieving wives. At once she asked him about Perrault. Where was he? Why wouldn’t he talk to her? A serious case was being flown in for Perrault to work with early the next morning; a young girl from Mexico. Perrault was very busy. “I call his office but the nurse won’t let me talk to him. I can’t understand this,” Mrs. Dahl said angrily. Jesse tried to explain that Perrault was very busy, very busy, and for a man his age … he wore himself out as it was, he exhausted himself, he did far too much.…

  “How early should I get here? I’ll stay here all night,” Mrs. Dahl said. “Tell me. Just tell me. What about that—” she said, gesturing toward her husband, “what about him? You tell me. I’ll get here at eight in the morning, no, at six. I’ll stay here all night if that’s what it takes to talk to him.…”

  “I’m sure he’ll talk to you tomorrow morning,” Jesse said.

  “I hope so. Yes, I hope so,” Mrs. Dahl said.

  She had the crow’s-feet, the hacking shadowy cough of a widow; even her large body, gowned in black, looked ponderous and stilled as if at a graveside. Jesse wished that she would not keep glaring at her husband, who was unconscious, hooked up with i.v. fluids and wasted to about a hundred and ten pounds, a long flat lump in bed. It would have been simpler for Mrs. Dahl to go home and forget all this, Jesse thought miserably, but how could he tell her that?

  After this he checked Perrault’s other patients, then went home, where he had to begin working up a presentation Perrault had asked him to make the next morning at one of the hospital conferences; he was up most of the night going over his notes and rereading certain articles Perrault had given him. He woke Helene at five o’clock to read her part of what he had written—he was anxious to do well, he was a little worried about Perrault’s opinion of him. “Why didn’t he give you more time for this?” Helene asked bitterly. “I have enough time,” Jesse said. “You always defend him. You defend him mechanically, without thinking,” Helene said.

  As Perrault’s assistant at the hospital Jesse was responsible for the work of all the other residents in Surgery; he had to help Perrault with every case, following patients from admission to surgery to discharge, writing up histories, keeping their records up to date, writing orders for their tests and medications, checking on them twice a day, intervening between Perrault and Perrault’s many enemies.… He was hounded by Perrault’s small wizened shrewd face, by his raspy voice, by his nuances and frictions and imaginings. It was not enough that Jesse had to keep sick people alive. He had to intervene between Perrault and anxious, desperate, demanding families; he had to calm down women like Mrs. Dahl, he had to pick up the pieces after Perrault, always in a hurry, blurted out to a worried husband or wife that “the case is hopeless—you came to me too late—” and went on to the next patient. He had to be pawed by weeping men and women whom Perrault was always eluding. And he had to intervene between Perrault and other staff men with whom the old man was always quarreling; there were squabbles that went back for a decade, squabbles that made no sense to Jesse but that he had had to enter vaguely, reluctantly. Perrault had a habit of scrawling angry remarks on little yellow slips of paper and leaving them for other doctors and nurses. Jesse had to sort out all this trouble and make sense of it. He spent time running down to the x-ray suite because Perrault was especially insulting to the x-ray technicians. He spent time trying to straighten out misunderstandings with nurses, to whom Perrault spoke dryly and impatiently, without bothering to look at them.… Jesse spent time apologizing, trying to apologize, trying to explain, straightening up the disorder that Perrault caused in his demand for absolute order.

  He had to represent Perrault in triumph at presentations like this: Polymyoclonia with Opsoclonus. That was the title of the case.

  “He treats you like a servant,” Helene said.

  “No,” said Jesse.

  Never impatient. Never angry. And he did not expect, as other assistants of Perrault’s had expected in the past, to be taken on as a junior partner in Perrault’s practice. That was a traditional joke around the hospital—Perrault’s assistants were always led to believe that he might take them on permanently, they sacrificed everything for him, and at the end of their residencies he simply said good-by to them.

  Jesse got some sleep, dreamed of Reva, woke and showered and went to the hospital early. He had written a little case study called Polymyoclonia with Opsoclonus. The words continued to unfold in his head, confused with the vague dream of Reva Denk; words flowing backward and forward; Jesse in his hospital outfit thinking of The Tragedy of Joseph Ross, which should have been the real title of his paper but was not; the title was Polymyoclonia with Opsoclonus. No tragedy. Perrault did not believe in tragedy. Jesse had a few minutes before the meeting began, so he looked in upon Mr. Dahl—still the same—maybe a little worse—a good academic exercise. Mrs. Dahl hovering nearby, waiting to trap Perrault. Jesse escaped her and went down to the conference room, where people were gathering; Perrault himself punctual and urbane, dressed in a dark blue pin-stripe suit that was several years out of fashion. Joseph Ross had been one of Perrault’s satisfying cases; he had been a case that had made sense in Perrault’s terms. No tragedy involved. The words Jesse had written the night before flowed backward and forward in his mind. He had been dreaming of them. He had been dreaming of Joseph Ross and of Reva. Was the dream completed? Perrault put his hand up on Jesse’s shoulder and complained to him about something. Jesse ducked his head and listened. Nervous, proud to be seen by the rest of the staff like this, embarrassed, uncertain of how to respond.… He treats you like a servant, Helene was always saying. She did not understand. If she could have seen Perrault whispering into Jesse’s ear now she would not understand. Jesse was a survivor. Jesse did not have a personality. He did not want a personality. His heartbeat told him always: here you are, here is Jesse, a survivor. One by one the men around Jesse, the men his own age, had disappeared. Their personalities had disappeared. Some had gone into private practice, some had gone to other hospitals because they had not been advanced at LaSalle. Jesse knew why they hadn’t been asked to stay. Jack Galt had gone to Seattle, to continue his residency in surgery; Milt Kuzma had settled for private general practice somewhere in southern Illinois, where there wasn’t much competition; Myron Diebold was an internist in Evanston, doing fairly well but frantic with the competition. Jesse alone had been asked to stay on for this fourth-year residency, Jesse alone had come to the attention of Roderick Perrault.…

  Unlike Joseph Ross, he was a survivor.

  Time to begin. He started to talk about the case, conscious of Perrault’s immediate restlessness; conscious of smo
ke in the air, of interns whispering somewhere in the back of the room, like schoolboys. Here is the story of Joseph Ross, seventeen-year-old Caucasian, referred to Dr. Perrault March 1, 1954, with complaints of vomiting, headache, difficulty in walking, jerking eye movements, decreased energy, depression.… A diary of Joseph Ross’s miseries: April 4, April 11, April 14, April 17.… Jesse had spent many hours with Joseph Ross and with his parents. Many hours. Eyes: horizontal conjugate oscillations. He had come to like Joseph Ross. Paroxysms. Laboratory tests normal; electroencephalogram normal. Jesse felt Perrault’s eye sharply upon him; he wondered if he was speaking too rapidly, too nervously. Not presenting the case clearly, not clearly … the staff could not see Joseph Ross’s face, could not imagine him … someone was snuffing out a cigarette butt inside an empty paper coffee cup. Therapy. Brief episodes of oscillopsia. Pneumoencephalogram: posterior fossa tumor. Craniotomy, therapy. Joseph Ross, tube-fed and lying meekly beneath Perrault’s contemplative gaze. His skin sore from the bedclothes. A victim. A victim hit and then cured. Operated upon, cured. Postoperative period marked by surprising return of normal reflexes. Neurological examination normal except for mild unsteadiness in tandem walking. Now Joseph Ross could walk normally across a room; if Jesse or any doctor were to hammer at his knee he would respond with the proper little kick. A good patient. Intelligent. Humble. Terrified.

  The presentation came to an end; a few questions; Perrault frowned with a kind of reluctant pleasure; evidently the talk had gone well. Jesse was anxious to get out. One of Perrault’s old enemies approached him afterward, coffee cup in hand. “Has Perrault been seeing the boy regularly since then?” he asked. “I don’t think so,” Jesse said.

  Out of courtesy, the man asked nothing more.

  Now his mind careened ahead to the meeting with Reva. She had told him to meet her at the corner of Adams and Michigan. Something came up at the last minute and Jesse was ten minutes late, vexed, worried that she would have come and gone. He waited on the corner. Stared over at the Art Institute—he had wanted to go there for years, since he’d first moved to Chicago, but for some reason he had never had time. His nervousness increased, almost to panic. He had wanted so few things in his life.… He had dreamed about Reva but he could not remember the dream. Maybe it wasn’t over yet. He had lain beside his wife and dreamed of Reva and of Joseph Ross, a skull opened to expose the brain, and maybe tonight he would dream of Mrs. Miller, yesterday’s case, and Mr. Dahl, a skull opened to expose the brain, any brain. When Jesse told his wife that he loved her, he was telling the truth. Those words were the truth. I love you, he told her. Mrs. Dahl had pawed at his arm again that morning. A face flabby with stale grief. Did Mrs. Dahl love Mr. Dahl now? Liver going, I.Q. gone, perception impulses shot. Married love. Mrs. Dahl loved the man in that room because he was her husband, assigned to her. A certain bulk of flesh assigned to her. Blind. Mute: no arguments. Jesse thought of Reva, and all these people, these faces, were swept out of his head.

  At a quarter to one a limousine pulled over to the curb near Jesse. An absurd, giant car, manned by a chauffeur with a thatch of silver hair. This man got out as if to display himself on the sidewalk—the hair brilliantly silver but much too long, almost like a girl’s. He wore no conventional uniform, only black trousers and a black pullover sweater with short sleeves, stretched tight across his fat chest and stomach and arms. This man approached Jesse. “Dr. Vogel?” he said politely. His accent was Southern. Jesse blinked away his surprise and stooped to see who was in the back seat of the car—was it Reva?—and saw a woman he supposed must be she, though he would not have recognized her because she looked so different.

  The chauffeur opened the back door for him.

  No, he wouldn’t have recognized her. Her hair was up, coiled around her head; her white outfit blinded him. “Hello,” Jesse said nervously. “Hello,” she said.

  Smiling. She was pleased with herself. Cunning and remote, safe from him in spite of their sudden, jarring closeness. He was sitting so very close to her.… “I thought we’d just drive around, because I have an appointment in a little while,” she said.

  “When?”

  “In a little while.”

  Jesse stared at her, too confused to be disappointed.

  “But how long will it be …?”

  Reva laughed. “You ask too many questions. Why are you so strange? If you knew all the trouble I went to just to see you today! I have a thousand things on my mind, I have to buy things, I have a long list of things to check off. I’m getting ready to go on a trip. See—” And she did an extraordinary thing, which Jesse was to remember often: she opened the white coat to expose her upper arm, where there was a small pink needle-prick. She opened her coat so quickly, intimately, as if Jesse were an old friend, and then she primly closed the coat again.

  “It only hurts a little. Nothing much,” she said.

  Jesse stared. “But I thought we were going to have lunch.… I thought we’d be alone, we’d have time to talk.…”

  “He can’t hear us, say anything you want. But I can’t spend much time with you. I’m sorry. I’m leaving for Italy Saturday morning.”

  “Italy.”

  “Yes, Italy.”

  “By yourself?”

  “No.”

  “But—when will you be back?”

  “Then we’re going to Majorca. I don’t know when we’ll be back, exactly. Maybe in the fall.”

  “You’re going to be gone that long?”

  “Yes,” she said, smiling oddly. “Why do you look so disappointed? You and I aren’t friends. We don’t know each other. You don’t have the right to look disappointed,” she said, laughing. “Was that little girl really your own child?”

  “Yes,” Jesse said. “And we’re expecting another baby in three months.…”

  Reva laughed, delighted. “And you tell me that so honestly!”

  “Why shouldn’t I tell you?”

  “You talk like a doctor, you’re so honest and sincere. Would you tell me if I had cancer?”

  Cancer …?

  She was so guarded and beautiful that he could not really see her. He kept staring at her but somehow he did not see her. Her beauty was extraordinary. The white outfit, the hair wound up around her head in a long heavy braid, as if she were wearing a crown, hair brushed down thick on her forehead, so low that her eyebrows were nearly covered … a gold necklace, or necklaces, a confusion of golden chains dotted with small pearls.… She looked foreign. Barbaric. Her skin, which Jesse had remembered being pale, was now healthy, girlish. She moved her arm and something rattled—small gold bracelets. And her fingers, which she extended to him in a teasing little gesture, patting his arm in mock consolation, were covered with rings today—four rings—solid gold and silver bands studded with small pearls and diamonds. The back of Jesse’s head crawled. He could only stare at her. While she chattered he could not even listen to her.… How to stop from dissolving in the back seat of this limousine? How to keep up the mask of his face?

  “Don’t stare at me. Please,” Reva said.

  “But … what is all this? This car? Who does it belong to?” Jesse asked weakly. “Who are you going to Italy with?”

  “A friend of mine.”

  “Who?”

  “I’m in love,” Reva said shyly.

  “In love …?”

  Jesse forced himself to think clearly: she is not a possibility. She is already in love.

  “Yes, in love, is that so strange? You’re married, aren’t you?”

  Jesse nodded vaguely. So she was not free, she belonged to someone else. He wondered why he had arranged to meet her and why he was being driven around downtown in the back seat of this great ludicrous car, a hearse-like car, when he had so much to do at the hospital.

  “What is your marriage like?” Reva asked.

  “An ordinary marriage. A good marriage,” Jesse said.

  “Your wife is going to have another baby?”

  “Yes, a
baby, another baby, a second baby. Yes, in three months. I’m permanently married,” he said slowly. He heard his voice but could not have predicted what it might say. “You don’t think you’ll be back until fall?”

  “I don’t know. Are you a doctor now or just in training?”

  “I’m finishing my residency. In surgery.”

  “Surgery …?”

  The heavy crown of hair seemed too much for her fragile head and neck. But her posture was perfect, even a little exaggerated, as if she, like Jesse, were very excited and self-conscious. She had begun to remind him of a typical woman patient, a young woman aware of him as a man, too aware, too intense.

  “What I would like to have happen to me,” Jesse said, talking freely and helplessly, “is to be invited to stay on with the man I’m assisting … to join him in his private practice.… But I’m very much in debt, I owe my father-in-law a lot of money, I …”

  Reva, stared at him in silence. He wondered what he had just said: something about money? Why had he mentioned that?

  “You’re going to be a surgeon?” Reva said.

  “A neurosurgeon.”

  “Ah,” she said, as if she had guessed this. She stared at him doubtfully.

  “Of course,” Jesse said quickly, “if I had enough money maybe I’d forget about all that and take you to Italy myself … I’ve never seen Italy … in fact, I’ve never seen anything, I don’t know anything except medicine and surgery.… I don’t know anything at all.”

  Reva shook her head. He wondered if she suddenly thought him a bad risk.

  “The last man I was with,” she said slowly, “was always going to the doctor, but it didn’t help too much. He was always imagining he was sick. Then when he drove to Detroit to see his mother one day he had an accident, he collided with a trailer-truck and was killed.…”

  “Who? Who was this?” Jesse asked in distress.

  “Oh, someone. A man.” Reva frowned. “I want to tell you about myself so you’ll know that I’m not interested in you. I’m being very honest. It isn’t because I’m in love and my life is taken care of now, really there couldn’t be anything between us because … because what you do frightens me, the idea of surgery frightens me.… The way you look at me is frightening too. That man, the one who got killed in the accident, was just an ordinary man and didn’t even have much of an education, but I loved him.”