Wonderland

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “You shouldn’t look at me like that out on the street,” Reva whispered. She was very girlish, very tense. “I’ll have to say good-by to you.”

  “I love you.”

  “You said you were married permanently. Don’t do that, don’t keep leaning against me … I don’t like it.…”

  They had stopped, embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” Jesse said.

  “Last year you seemed to like me so much, without any reason, without any advantage,” Reva said. “I didn’t understand it. But it was … it was wonderful to me, it was so pure.… I want to keep myself pure and healthy.… In the past year I loved a man very much, but then over the months I fell out of love with him; I couldn’t help myself, and I had to leave him because it was all ugly and false, it was a lie. It made me old, to tell lies to him. It aged me,” she said, and she had never looked younger, “and it aged him.… But I made the break and came home by myself. From time to time I thought of you, when I was alone or couldn’t sleep or walking in a city I didn’t know, wondering what the hell I was doing there. I had never met anyone like you. There’s something about you that is mysterious and protective … and powerful.… I feel like a sister to you. You would have been a very wonderful, protective brother. You would have changed my life. I can’t explain it. This is the most I’ve ever said to a man, I mean about my feelings toward him. It never pays to say much. Confessions are mistakes. Anyway, I don’t understand my own feelings and I’m not very interested in them. I only know that I thought of you often. I wished you well. You had said that your wife was going to have another baby, and I wondered how that turned out. I’ve never had a baby myself. I’m not maternal. Do I look maternal?” she said with a peculiar, sharp laugh.

  “What? Yes, I think you do,” Jesse said. He was still hurt by her recoiling from him. He did not know what to say.

  Reva frowned. “The gallery is just up the block,” she said.

  Jesse wished she would ask him again: Did she look maternal?

  She could have his babies. His babies.

  She was leading him to a shop, an art gallery with storefront windows, crammed with paintings and sketches and pieces of modern sculpture. Jesse stared doubtfully. Inside, the place was cramped. The molding at the ceiling was filthy. Slowly, reluctantly, Jesse looked at the paintings on exhibit—a dozen large canvases, oil paintings in bright colors, green and yellow and orange. Zigzagging lines that made his eyes boggle. Reva seized his hand and led him somewhere. “This one. Look at this,” she said quietly. The canvas was at least six by nine feet—enormous, bloated, a riot of lines and ugly shapes, vaguely human. Jesse stared coldly. This nightmare was not his and it did not interest him. He did not understand it.

  “What do you think?” Reva asked excitedly.

  Jesse shook his head.

  “Does it frighten you? Does it make you think of anything?”

  A short, bald man in youthful clothes approached and Reva greeted him with the same enthusiasm she had shown Jesse up in his office. Jesse smiled ironically at her, but she took no notice. She introduced him to this man—thank God she introduced him only as “Jesse Vogel”—and Jesse deliberately did not catch his name. A pert, busy little man. Jesse waited patiently, impatiently, while Reva talked with this man as if she had hours to spare.

  “… it might work out with Annie again. I don’t know,” Reva was saying. “He doesn’t have much hope himself. But he doesn’t talk about it. I’m going up in another week, he wants me to, but I don’t know what will happen … I feel drained of everything.… I feel so sorry for her. He says he doesn’t care what she has gone through,” Reva said, tilting her head toward one of the big ugly canvases as she spoke; and Jesse understood at once that she was speaking of the painter of these things. The knowledge flashed through him. “She’s such a slippery, snaky person, she’s so … so dwarfed … but I feel very sorry for her.…”

  “Don’t,” the man said brightly.

  Jesse hated him.

  In a panic Jesse glanced at his watch: so much time had passed! She was going to leave him again. Going to walk away. Though she had taken his arm now as if they belonged together, though she led him up and down the aisles of this miserable little exhibit, Jesse knew that she was going to leave him again and that he would be unable to stop her. He was silent, sullen. Reva chattered. What the hell did she see in these paintings? All this mess was a mockery of life, of the natural forms of life. Deterioration of vision. Unbalance, collapse. Spasms. Brain damage. Cancer. A crowding of the natural forms of life, a crowding of the form of the canvases itself—the madness of colors and shapes without human sense.

  Cancer.

  Cancer.

  Ah, now: they were looking at a man’s picture. A face that filled the entire photograph, big, dark, wild eyebrows, stern features, creases on his forehead as if he were frowning painfully, angrily, bundles of hair, tufts of hair in his ears. A man in his forties. A grainy wood background that seemed more gentle than the man himself.

  “That’s Raeder,” Reva said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “What do you think of him?” she asked eagerly.

  “I don’t think anything.”

  “But his face …? His face?” Reva said, stroking her own face hesitantly.

  The gallery owner approached them with a framed drawing. “Reva is much too shy to call your attention to this,” he said flirtatiously. He held it up for Jesse to see, pressed against his own chest, and glanced down intimately at it himself. It was an utterly incomprehensible mess of lines—Jesse didn’t know if they were ink, or what. He peered at the drawing and saw that its title was “Reva.”

  “Oh, don’t show him that!” Reva laughed.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” the little man said, smiling at Jesse. “So much energy! So much life!”

  Jesse’s mouth twisted angrily.

  “All this is useless, this stuff,” he said, indicating the other paintings, the whole shop. “It’s ugly. There is no value to it.…”

  Reva stared at him.

  “No value to it …?”

  “Nothing. There’s nothing to it,” Jesse said angrily.

  Reva turned and walked away slowly. He followed her. The little man was saying in a sprightly, ironic voice: “Come back again soon, soon! The two of you, please!”

  Reva did not look back.

  Outside, she turned to him but did not look at him. She said quickly, “I shouldn’t have come to see you. It was a mistake.”

  “It wasn’t a mistake.”

  “I have to leave you now.”

  “You’re not leaving,” Jesse said.

  They began walking quickly. Jesse was careful not to brush against her.

  It was a madness, his desire to hold her, to hurt her, to blot out that look of stubborn disapproval! What right did a woman have to disapprove of him? Of Jesse Vogel? He loved her and he wanted to grab her, to hurt her. He took hold of her wrist to slow her down. His fingers closed over the hard cool metal of her bracelet.

  “Where are you going next week? Where in Wisconsin?”

  “A little town. It doesn’t matter to you.”

  “Where?”

  “Oh—Hilsinger—”

  She did not smile. Jesse felt the absence of her smile.

  “Do you love him? That man in the photograph?—that face?”

  Reva said nothing.

  “Don’t go back to him. Stay with me.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Yes, you can. You can.”

  “You’re permanently married,” Reva said ironically. “Didn’t you tell me that? Anyway, I don’t love you.”

  “I won’t ask anything of you. I won’t involve you in my life.”

  “You’re permanently married,” Reva said.

  Jesse hesitated.

  “That might not be true,” he said slowly.

  Reva did not reply.

  They were walking quickly, quickly. Jesse felt time running away. He felt an immense,
dangerous pulsation—as if the hot, hollow, radiant core of his being, the elusive Jesse itself, were very close to his grasp. He still had hold of Reva’s wrist. She was obedient, strangely passive, though she walked so swiftly, with her eyes fixed straight ahead. He felt that he could lead her anywhere, off the street, out of the city itself, he could lead her into the darkness with him, he could force her to lie down.… Once he made love to her the mystery of Reva would be ended: she would be his wife then.

  “If I had money … if I had a little money.… If I weren’t in debt.…” Jesse stammered. He glanced sideways at Reva. She strode forward with the brisk, easy walk of a huntress, not drawing away from him and yet not really subdued, her arm passively against his, her eyes fixed straight ahead. She was hurrying. Hurrying out of his life. Jesse’s mind raced in a series of twists and blots and zigzags of thought.… What if …? What if …?

  “I might not be married permanently,” he said.

  “But I don’t love you.”

  “Then why did you come to me?” Jesse said angrily.

  “Because … because …”

  “Why are you here, why are we walking here together? I could kill you,” Jesse said.

  Reva drew her arm away from his.

  “I believe you,” she said.

  A crowd of noontime shoppers threatened to separate them. Jesse pushed her back against a building and they stood together, face to face, staring. There was a flushed, vigorous color to Reva’s face. Her lips trembled; she stood with her arms tightly, primly folded over her stomach. It seemed to Jesse an odd stance.

  “This is killing me,” Jesse said in anguish. “He’s killing me—the old man. I peel out the tumors, ripe as little plums, and there are always more—half a dozen more—thousands more waiting and getting ripe—I can’t take it. I can’t take you—what you’re doing to me—”

  “I’m sorry,” Reva said. She brushed her forehead with one hand. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Jesse stooped to hear her better.

  “What?” he said.

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” she whispered. “I need … I need help.… I remembered your name and that you were a doctor.…”

  Jesse stared at her. “What do you mean?”

  She looked up toward him, not meeting his eye. He felt his scalp tightening, the hairs of his head rising. A dark red thatch of hair, a swirl of hair rising from his scalp. His forehead was tightening as if with the energy, the anguish of thought. His face, the muscles of his cheeks and neck, tightened. Jesse felt that his face must be like a shout to her.

  “What, what do you mean?” he cried.

  She did not answer. She only stared toward him, a frightened woman. He gripped her shoulders, the sharp bones of her shoulders, and had to restrain himself from shaking her violently. I could kill you!

  “You—you can go to hell!” he said instead.

  He walked away.

  13

  Several weeks later Jesse was glancing quickly through his mail at the hospital—most of it advertisements—when he came across an envelope postmarked Lockport, New York.

  “My God.…”

  He felt sick. He hid the envelope in the pile of mail. Lockport.

  In a daze he waited for the elevator. Someone was speaking to him. He nodded and backed away, decided to take the stairs up to the fourth floor and so he ran up, his legs straining, his heart pounding lightly and rapidly, and when he got to the fourth floor, the elevator door opened and the doctor who had been talking to him downstairs got out.

  “How is everything in your life, Jesse?” he said with an odd smile.

  “Fine. Everything is fine,” Jesse said. He had forgotten this doctor’s name in his confusion. They walked together toward the operating suite. The doctor seemed curious about something—maybe about Perrault, there was a rumor about Perrault’s health caving in, an untrue rumor—maybe about Jesse, who must have looked extremely nervous. He was scheduled for a simple operation at nine-thirty, one he had performed many times, but it seemed to him now an impossibility. He kept licking his lips and saying, “Good, fine, everything is fine … yes … everything is working out.…”

  “When I want to know anything around here I ask the nurses,” the doctor said. “That’s how I find out who’s on the way up and who’s on the way down.”

  “Who’s on the way down …?” Jesse asked vaguely.

  “How do you like your office with Perrault? It’s in the Blake Building, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Jesse said, edging away.

  “How is the old man these days?”

  “Oh, good, fine, everything is fine,” Jesse said hurriedly.

  “Some of us were wondering how he was,” the doctor said, smiling at Jesse.

  Jesse managed to get away from this conversation. He contemplated the handful of mail. If he opened the letter now, before the operation.… That might be bad luck. Might destroy him. He was already sickish, trembling, and in a few minutes he had to operate.… His mind went dark: how could he make the simplest incision, let alone saw away at the bone of the skull? What about the blood? How could he knowingly, willingly, start the flow of a stranger’s blood? He kept seeing that envelope, that postmark. Lockport, New York. He kept seeing the flashing, ballooning face of Dr. Pedersen, the upraised forefinger, he kept hearing that voice bouncing through the air.…

  “Good morning, Doctor,” someone was saying.

  No, he would read the letter afterward. When the danger was past. It might bring news of Dr. Pedersen’s death. In that case he would not be able to operate and would have to run out of the hospital; everyone would stare after him. Dr. Perrault would be notified. The patient—who was the patient? who was going to be operated on this morning? what was the trouble?—the patient would be under the anesthetic already and Jesse would run away from him, away from the sawing, the blood, the brain, the tumor, he would run out onto the street weeping, and so it would be better not to open the envelope now. After the operation, when everything was over, he would take it into the lavatory and read it there.

  He left his mail in the surgeons’ lounge.

  He scrubbed and got dressed and felt reassured when he saw the patient actually up where he was supposed to be, at nine-thirty, with plenty of blood on hand and an anesthetist he respected, even a scrub nurse he liked, a middle-aged woman devoted to Perrault. Jesse had inherited all Perrault’s likes and dislikes. He slipped into them as he slipped into his hospital clothes, into his gloves and mask, leaving the trembling Jesse outside in the corridor. Better not to think about that envelope and the letter inside. Better not to think about Jesse, waiting back in the corridor, nervously licking his lips and wondering what would become of him. Better to think only of the job ahead, a few hours’ hard work.… Lyle Carter was his assistant for the operation. Jesse felt much older and luckier than Lyle, though they were about the same age. Now that Jesse was in private practice, safely taken care of, he did not feel uneasy in front of him; Lyle was not going to take his place with Perrault; no one would take Jesse’s place with Perrault. He was safe, absolutely safe. That was why he spoke so quietly with Lyle, telling him what he intended to do. He was quiet, passionless, modest with everyone.

  Because he was away from the hospital so much, Jesse had lost track of its hierarchy except at the very top. The small army of interns and residents were strangers to him. The interns looked boyish and undependable. He knew a few of the first- and second-year residents, but he hesitated to trust them with his own patients. He checked and double-checked his own patients, worried that other people would make mistakes with them and that they would die: he remembered his own confusion as an intern. Now he did not trust anyone. Did not trust anyone. Jesse stared down at the man he was going to operate upon and it occurred to him that the man might die, might die under the anesthetic, might bleed to death, might spurt blood up onto the lighting fixtures, might sit up with a laugh and knock the instrument out of Jesse’s hand.… The
nurse was looking at him. At Jesse. Lyle was standing near him, watching, ready to watch. Ready to learn what Jesse had to teach him. The body was waiting. The tumor was waiting.

  Jesse began, moving jerkily. This was not his usual style. But he had to get started, he couldn’t stand there all day while people stared at him. A body, a skull, the interesting profusion of nerves and tissue and bones knit together into a shield. Well, attack it and open it. No fooling around. No time to waste.

  A simple removal of a tumor. Jesse had to slow himself down, he had to keep his hands going slowly, slowly. The tumor peeled out so nicely: it was surely benign. Simple and benign. Jesse was therefore bringing life, bringing a gift of life, to the body on the operating table. A droplet of sweat fell from Jesse’s forehead onto his own arm. Like a tear. Jesse worked in silence, going slowly. Lyle hung over him. He wanted to know everything. Wanted to learn everything. Well, let him watch, let him learn, Jesse had no secrets. The intern assigned to the operation had nothing to do but watch. He was a nice-faced boy with a crew cut, very young. Jesse glanced at him from time to time. The boy looked very tired. Wanted to get out of here, wanted to run out into the street weeping, sick of the odor of anesthetic and blood.… Jesse thought of Perrault and of how swiftly the old man worked, especially when he was in a bad mood. And so he forced himself to slow down. He would be slow, methodical, passionless.

  The patient? A man of about thirty-five. Referred to Perrault by a neurologist in Dayton: headaches, small spasms of the right arm, a stony, plain face, too rigid to show fear. A hulking body of the sort Jesse had seen often on the psychiatric ward; typical schizophrenic thickness, a premature stoop to the shoulders. He was the son of a wealthy Ohio industrialist. He was the “son” of someone with money, therefore he lay unconscious on this table while Jesse picked inside his skull and saved his life. Not a person for Jesse, not really. A body and a brain. A large container of blood—was the blood too dark? too light? Jesse always worried about blood—that had to be kept percolating or Perrault would be furious with him.