Wonderland

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The pathologist’s report came back in fifteen minutes: good news. The tumor was benign.

  “Ah, thank God,” Jesse said. He wanted to weep, this was such good news.

  Now Jesse had Lyle work. He stared at Lyle’s hands, at his mannerisms. Who was Lyle imitating? Jesse himself? Perrault? Jesse dreaded the operation coming to an end. Outside, the letter waited for him; but in here, in this confined, chilly room, he was safe. He knew what he was doing and what he had done. He trusted himself. He trusted Lyle. Nothing could go wrong now. Lyle’s hand would not slip, it was impossible that he should make a mistake.… Once, as an intern, Jesse had assisted a surgeon who had opened a chest with one cutting of the knife, an extraordinary fifteen- or sixteen-inch incision to get at a hernia in the diaphragm, filling up with blood, bubbling with blood, and the instruments had been enormous, like mechanic’s tools, crunching and spreading the ribs, making a huge hole in the chest. Minutes had expanded and contracted like the pulsations of the exposed heart and the lung, spongy and moving and slippery, an uncanny sight. Jesse had stared down into that hole, into someone’s chest opened up … opened up like that for five and a half hours … and after that stint Jesse had great faith in the body’s ability to withstand anything, any kind of battering and crunching and snipping.

  It was not possible that this man would die. Jesse kept telling himself that, sweating, anxious to the point of pain. Other men died, other patients of his and Perrault’s died, but not this man, not today, not when Jesse was so feeble and exposed.…

  Afterward, he withdrew shakily. It looked all right. He praised Lyle, backing away from him, anxious to get away and back to the lounge. Lyle remained to dictate the account of the operation. Jesse thanked the scrub nurse and the others and backed away, went out to the lounge again—there was his pile of mail, still—no one had walked off with it—

  Jesse picked up the letter and closed his eyes.

  What if Dr. Pedersen was dead?

  He did not dare look at the return address on the envelope. Instead, he opened it hurriedly; roughly he drew out a piece of thick paper that rattled as he opened it; he read in a rush, in a panic, standing there in his green gown: “… estate of William H. Shirer … bequeathed to Jesse Vogel (Jesse Pedersen) … a sum of $600,000.…” This made no sense. He forced himself to go back and read it over again. It appeared to be a formal statement from a Lockport attorney notifying him that he had been left certain assets and investments totaling $600,000 by his grandfather, William H. Shirer. The attorney had been searching for him as Jesse Pedersen and had been informed at the University of Michigan that Jesse Vogel was Jesse Pedersen, and now … and now he had been bequeathed $600,000 by the late William H. Shirer … who had died at the age of ninety-one in Lockport, New York.…

  Someone was speaking to Jesse. Jesse nodded, edged away, and read the letter over again.

  He looked at the back of the letter: nothing. His eye could not take even that in, not exactly. So he remained staring at it for several seconds. There were very small, very light, almost imperceptible dots on the back of the white paper, made by periods and semicolons on the other side that had pressed through with more force than the other typed letters. Jesse turned the letter back over and, when his vision cleared, read the first paragraph again. Each word seemed to make sense and flowed smoothly into the next; but the sentences themselves did not seem to go together. One sentence stood out: Mr. Shirer expressed a wish to remember you for your kindness and sympathy concerning his daughter. He did not elaborate upon this point with me, but I assume you understand his meaning.

  Jesse saw a fat woman, massive and fluttery, and an enormous waddling fat boy, the two of them hurrying through a hotel lobby. The two of them cringing as a telephone rang. The two of them opening packages of Chinese food, their mouths watering fiercely, desperately.…

  Jesse began to tremble.

  “Is it bad news, Dr. Vogel?” someone asked.

  The young intern. Jesse stared at him wildly.

  “Is it … bad news?” the intern asked.

  “No, good news. Good news,” Jesse said blankly. A fat woman and a fat boy on Ontario’s fish-strewn shore, opening a picnic basket, their eyes narrowing sharply with hunger, with lust.…

  He would have to remember all of that life. He was doomed to relive it.

  Little Jeanne was right outside the bedroom door, rapping on it. With her frantic small fists. She thumped against it, banging her shoulder against it so that one of them would have to call out, “Jeanne! Don’t hurt yourself!”

  Helene sprang to her feet, then hesitated. She stared toward the door as if she did not know what to do. Jesse called out, “Jeanne, don’t hurt yourself—stop that—”

  Silence. Jeanne’s giggling.

  Jesse stared at his wife. Her face was turned from him, in profile—stunned, joyless.

  “I’d better let her in,” Jesse said.

  Helene did not reply.

  “I didn’t mean to … didn’t mean to upset you so.… This won’t change our lives,” Jesse said.

  Jeanne began rapping on the door again. Maybe she thought this was a game: her mother and father hiding on her.

  “You never told me that you had a grandfather who had so much money,” Helene said slowly.

  “I didn’t know it myself. I mean, that he had so much,” Jesse said evasively.

  The letter lay on the bed where Helene had let it drop. She turned to look at him; her gaze was level, suspicious, frightened.

  “Helene, why are you so unhappy?” Jesse said.

  Her face seemed to collapse.

  “This won’t change our lives.…”

  “Won’t it?” Helene said.

  Jeanne was calling to them. Her small, petulant, frightened voice: Mommy, Daddy. Jesse went to the door. He picked up his daughter in his arms and hid his face against her, so that she giggled in surprise, squirming.

  “Daddy, let me down! Let me down!”

  But when he tried to put her down she hung onto his neck, still giggling. Jesse bounced her in his arms; he did not dare turn back to Helene for several seconds.

  “Won’t it change our lives?” Helene said.

  “What do you mean?” Jesse asked.

  “Won’t you want to leave now? Pay off your debts here and leave?”

  “My debts?”

  “To my father. To me. Pay us off and leave.…”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jesse said.

  Helene picked up the letter again and tried to read it. Then she let it fall back onto the bedspread; Jesse saw that her eyes were bright and bitter with tears.

  “You’re in love with someone. I know it,” Helene said.

  “Don’t talk like that,” Jesse said angrily, “not in front of—”

  “Go to hell,” Helene said.

  Jesse carried his daughter back out into the living room and sat down with her in the large armchair near the window, “his” chair, and forced himself numbly to listen to her chatter—shrill, hurried chatter, because Jeanne sensed his love for the new baby, her parents’ preference for that newer, smaller baby. He forced himself to listen. He kept seeing Helene’s tight, anxious face, the absolutely straight part in her black hair, and beyond her familiar face, as if transforming it, the warmer, younger face of Reva, Reva’s eyes and their restlessness, Reva’s mouth.…

  When Helene came out she had washed her face. She brought the baby with her, trying to smile, as if nothing had passed between them in the other room. Michele. Jesse stared at the baby. Michele and Jeanne. His daughters. He had wanted other children, sons, but he would not have them; Helene could not have any more children.

  Staring at the baby, Jesse said, “I could never leave.…”

  Helene smiled stiffly at him.

  He could not eat dinner, couldn’t bring himself to sit down. Nervously, apologetically, he backed away and thought wildly of something to tell this woman, this wife of his, some excuse to offe
r to her—he had to go back to the office, he had forgotten to bring home a chapter of that book Perrault was working on. “I’m supposed to go over it for him. I forgot to bring it home,” Jesse said.

  “All right,” said Helene.

  “It won’t take me long.…”

  He drove out and parked somewhere and sat for a while in his car. Then he went to a telephone booth, though he knew Reva’s name would not be in the directory. He leafed through the big Chicago directory, listlessly, in a kind of daze, thinking of that enormous woman and that enormous son of hers, the son taking the hinges off the bathroom door, the hinges off the door, off the door. No Reva Denk in the directory. No Reva Denk. She did not exist: not as Reva Denk. Standing on the street corner, in public, with her arms folded primly, protectively over that belly of hers. Still flat, he had thought. Girlish and flat. Mrs. Pedersen had been swollen as if with a pregnancy that had bloated her entire body, her entire being, making her cheeks bell out with a flirtatious alarm. Ah, pregnant women.… Jesse could not remember whom he himself had impregnated. Did it matter? What did it matter? His sperm or another man’s sperm, all of it clotted and anonymous, what did it matter?

  It was possible that Reva had not yet had an abortion.

  He would drive up to Hilsinger and get her. Save her. No, he would not perform any abortion on her; he would marry her; he would be the father of that baby. I didn’t know what else to do, Reva had said, frightened. He would be the father of that unborn baby, that mysterious baby, perhaps the one baby he was meant to father out of the entire universe of confused, blundering human beings.… Excited, he leafed through the directory again, glancing at the names, the columns of names … and none of them meant anything to him, he didn’t give a damn for any of them, not one.… If Reva Denk’s name was not in this book, the book had no value.

  He shoved the directory back onto its metallic shelf and went out to his car. He started driving north, north toward Milwaukee; at a gas station thirty miles away he stopped to get gas and a road map, and he thought that maybe he should call his wife, maybe it was now time.… But to tell her what? That she was right, he wanted to pay off his debts and be free, he would never see her again? Never see the girls again?

  He drove on.

  He could not call her. He did not dare call her. He imagined his saying, Helene, I have to leave you, and he imagined her perfectly cool voice in reply: But I will have another baby for you. Another baby for you. Isn’t that what you want, another baby?

  And then he would never be able to leave her.

  14

  Dawn. Jesse woke in the front seat of his car, his mouth pounding with dry heat, his eyes sore, raw. He knew at once where he was and something moved in his stomach, low in his belly, a sense of disaster.

  He was somewhere outside Hilsinger, Wisconsin. His car on the shoulder of a narrow highway. Nearby, a ditch choked with weeds—pastureland—a stunted, sparse clump of trees. He rubbed his eyes and the landscape took on no more significance. His mouth was dry, the back of his tongue raw with heat as if he had a fever there, concentrated there. Had he spent the night arguing? He remembered arguing in his sleep. Arguing with Helene, with Mrs. Pedersen, with Reva … there were too many women in his life and he needed to clear himself of them permanently.

  He sat up stiffly. Moved himself with care. Got behind the steering wheel again, peered at his face in the mirror—that thatch of red-blond hair, wild from a night of misery, of argument, lifting from his forehead with its usual despairing energy. I am going to marry you. No abortion.

  Why?

  He did not believe in abortion, in death. He believed only in life.

  Yes, but why?

  In life. In life.

  But why in life?

  He got the car going again, backed around on the highway, and passed at once the “tourist court” that had been closed the night before—the proprietor, a middle-aged man, had refused to give him a cabin last night and had told him to come back in the morning. Well, it was morning now but he was damned if he was going there. He drove angrily past—just a row of ugly little cabins, no more than shacks with screens that belled out loosely and a garbage dump only a few hundred yards away.

  Hilsinger: a name on Reva’s lips, melodic and inviting. He had been thinking of that name for some weeks. But Hilsinger itself, the real place, the town itself, was not melodic and inviting at all; it was a dull, dismal, ordinary town of about three thousand people, built along the banks of a narrow river, with a few mills and warehouses and some new gas stations and hamburger stands out along the highway. In the distance were hills, a hazy blend of earth and sky no one but Jesse would bother to look at. The air was chilly and assaulting. He needed to wake up. He needed to get that taste of death out of his mouth.

  He turned into the parking lot of a diner. Several large trucks were already parked there. Inside, he ordered a cup of coffee. The woman behind the counter gave him an appraising look. How was he dressed? How had he left home? He couldn’t quite remember but he suspected he had a hunted, perplexed look. He rubbed his sore eyes and finished his coffee and asked for a glass of water. His stomach was heavy, pulling him down. He felt sick. Noticing the waitress staring at him, he felt how easily he had become another person—someone to be stared at, someone to rub his eyes slowly and miserably, in bewilderment, in a sleazy diner in Hilsinger, Wisconsin. It did not seem probable that he was Jesse Vogel, M.D., an associate of Roderick Perrault. It did not seem probable that he was a married man, the father of two children, or that he had inherited $600,000, or that he could perform delicate, patient little operations upon the human brain, yes, the human brain, though right at the moment his eyes and mouth felt encrusted with a kind of dull, pulsating, feverish scum.

  “Could you give me some information?” Jesse said.

  The waitress, startled, seemed to leap forward. She picked up a filthy yellow sponge and began fingering it, picking at it.

  “I’m looking for an art school that’s supposed to be up here. An art colony …?”

  “Art colony?”

  “I’m from Chicago and I’m looking for an artist named Raeder. I understand he has a kind of art school up here,” Jesse said.

  The waitress began wiping the counter in front of him slowly, thoughtfully, with the yellow sponge. “Well, there’s some painters outside town,” she said, “they rented the old Case farm.…”

  “Where is that?”

  “Oh, just up the highway, outside town, maybe a mile away.…” She looked at him and Jesse saw a very ordinary, friendly, cautious woman of about thirty-five, he felt a sudden surge of pity for her and for her life. But the look she gave him was pitying. “On the mailbox it probably says Case, they probably didn’t bother to change it. A big old place with some barns.… Are you a painter too? They had some painters up from the city to take courses or something. I don’t know what happened. There was some fracas, something went on, a fight or something … it didn’t get in the newspaper … that was maybe five months ago.…”

  “I’m not a painter. I’m just up for a visit,” Jesse said.

  Jesse found the farm without any trouble. Over the name CASE on the mailbox there had been painted the name MAX RAEDER in big white bloated balloon letters, the kind of expansive letters used in cartoons to indicate mirth. Self-parodying mirth. Jesse turned up the bumpy drive and at once a large dirty collie ran out after him, barking. Some chickens ran loose. The farmhouse was in poor condition, and behind it were other, more dilapidated buildings—a barn, a kind of coop that had been painted half-way around in a bright unbelievable red color, a few shanties. Two mud-splattered cars and a pickup truck were parked in the driveway.

  Jesse got out of the car in spite of the angry dog. “Go away. Get. Go to hell,” he muttered. A man peered out of the house, opening the door cautiously, Jesse saw that it was not Raeder. “Hello,” he called, “hello—can I talk to you? Is Max Raeder there?”

  The man came out onto the porch, shiv
ering. He wore only an undershirt and jeans. “Max is in bed,” he said. “Are you a friend of his or what?”

  “I’m a friend of Reva’s.”

  “Oh, Reva. Reva. Well yes, Reva.…” the man said slowly. He was not quite a man, really a boy of about nineteen—sandy-haired, smiling, bearded. His skin was rough and some of the pimples had run together into patches of red that looked painful, like burns. “Did you say Reva? Are you a friend of hers?”

  “Yes, I think she’s expecting me.”

  “Well, yes.… Reva’s in bed too.”

  Jesse’s pulse leaped.

  Now a woman came out of the house, wearing a raincoat and slippers. Her bare legs were very pale in the morning light.

  The boy said to her politely, “Annie, this is a friend of Reva’s. Is she maybe up yet?”

  “You know nobody’s up yet,” the woman said irritably. She called the dog back. Jesse, trying to smile at her, afraid of the dog and afraid of what was waiting for him inside the house, felt with a peculiar, lightheaded, almost sweetish panic the sickness of his bowels, his head, the back of his mouth. It was at the back of his mouth that his soul began, and there the sickness began. The woman looked at him, sharp-eyed. Her hair was stringy and long. “How come you’re up here so early, mister? It’s pretty early to be causing so much trouble.”

  Jesse imagined Reva in bed with that man—the man of the photograph—the two of them clutching each other in a musty, ill-smelling bed, on a dirty mattress, beneath dirty quilts. Reva entangled in a stranger’s arms and perfectly happy.

  “I can wait until they wake up,” Jesse said.

  He was very excited.