Joyce Oates - Sourland

“Why didn’t you touch me?”

I laugh in his arms. I am very happy. In the man’s arms, my thigh-stumps lifted to fit in that special place. He is caressing, kissing, the pit of my belly. My tiny slant-eye belly button. With his tongue. & my shoulder tucked into the crook of his arm. So snugly we fit together, like tree-roots that have grown together. & this not over a period of years but at once, all but overnight as by a miracle.

“Because one touch would not have been enough for me. That’s why.”

At the Jersey shore spring is slow to arrive. Still in early April there are dark-glowering days spitting icy rain. Fierce swirling snowflakes & ice-pellets — flotillas of snow-clouds like gigantic clipper ships blown overhead — yet by degrees with the passing of days even the storm-sky begins to remain light later & later — until at last at 6 P.M. — the library’s closing time, weekdays — the sky above the ocean, visible through the broad bay window at the front of the library, was no longer dark. “Jane! Your friend is waiting at the front desk.”

“My friend? My friend — who?”

My face flushed hot with blood. My eyes welled with tears of distress. So it must have been known to them, casually known to the other librarians, that crippled Jane Erdley had a friend ; that the tall, taciturn slightly older man who came frequently to the library was Jane Erdley’s special friend .

This was a day I was working at the rear of the library doing book orders on a computer. Another librarian had taken over the circulation desk.

“He — isn’t my friend. He’s a relative — a cousin — a distant cousin — he lives over in Barnegat Sound.”

I did not meet the woman’s eye. My voice was husky, wavering.

Though I was smiling, or trying to smile. A flash of a smile lighting up my face, in defiance of pity, sympathy. Whatever you are offering me, I am not in need of.

On this windy April day I was wearing a pleated skirt made of cream-colored wool flannel, that resembled a high school cheerleader’s skirt, & I was wearing a crimson satin blouse with a V-neckline glittering with thin gold chains & small crystal beads, & if you dared to lean over, to peer at my legs, or what was meant to represent my “legs,” you would see the twin prostheses, shiny plastic artificial legs & steel pins & on my (small) feet eyelet stockings & black patent leather “ballerina slippers.”

My crutches were nearby. My crutches have a look of having been flung gaily aside, as of little consequence.

“Well. He seems very nice — gentlemanly. He’s obviously very fond of you.”

The woman spoke in a voice of mild reproach. A chill passed over me. She knows! They all know, & are disgusted.

This was clear to me, suddenly. & there was no pleasure in it, only a shared disgust, dismay.

& so that evening I told Tyrell I did not want to see him anymore, I thought it was best for us not to see each other after this night. In his station wagon he was driving us along the ocean highway to Shore Island & gripping the steering wheel tight in his left hand so the knuckles glared white & with his other hand he held my left hand & spread his fingers wide grasping my upper thigh, that was my “stump” — the living flesh that abutted the plastic prostheses, so strangely — compulsively he was squeezing the pleats of my skirt & the tip of his middle finger pressed against the pit of my belly; it was past 6:30 P.M. but not yet dusk, the eastern sky above the ocean was streaked with horizontal strips of clouds of the color of bruised rotted fruit & quietly I told him I did not think that this was a good idea — “seeing each other the way we do” — I told him that people were beginning to talk of us in Barnegat — & eventually, his family would find out — his wife…

My voice trailed off. I knew that I had upset him & knew that he could not turn to face me while he was driving, to protest.

Yet: without speaking Tyrell pulled the station wagon off the highway & turned onto a gravel service road — the abruptness of his behavior was exciting to me, & unnerving — behind us traffic streamed on the highway but this was a desolate place amid stunted trees & sand dunes & scattered trash & out of sight of the highway Tyrell braked the station wagon & turned to me & his shadowed face was anguish & his hands were on me roughly & in desperation — his mouth on mine, his tongue in my mouth hungry & strangely cool & I held him in my arms in triumph feeling the strength of my biceps & my shoulders flow into the man, though I could not match the man in physical strength yet he would have to acknowledge the strength & the suppleness of my body & he said, “Don’t say such things, Jane — I love you so much, Jane, there is no one but you. There is no one” — pulling at my clothing, at the pleated skirt & now his hands were on the prosthetic limbs fumbling to detach them from my thigh-stumps & he was moaning — trembling — he was desperate with love for me & behind the rain-splotched windshield of the vehicle that same waxy-pale moon now a diminished quarter-moon, winking.

No one Jane but you.

Nothing but this.

In the night he cries out in his sleep. He thrashes, he shivers, he shudders & I am frightened of his sudden strength, if he tries to defend himself against a dream-assailant. From his throat issue loud crude animal cries, like nothing I have heard from him before. With some difficulty I manage to wake him & he’s uncertain of where he is & agitated & by degrees becomes calmer & finally laughs — he has turned on the bedside lamp, he has fumbled to find a cigarette in a trouser pocket — saying he’d had a nightmare. Some “ridiculous” creature with sharp teeth & a stunted head like a crocodile was trying to eat him — devour him.

I ask him if he often has nightmares & he laughs irritably saying who knows or gives a damn — “Dreams are debris to be forgotten.”

Later: “I dreamt that we were both dead. But very happy. You said Maybe we will never be born. ”

Then in early April, I saw him.

In the East Shore Mall, I saw him.

Suddenly then & with no preparation, Tyrell Beckmann & his family.

On their strong, whole legs. As in the central open atrium of the Mall I approached these strangers & saw how one of them, the male, the husband & father , materialized into Tyrell who was my lover — this was a shock! — this was an ugly surprise — yet I did not falter unless for a half-second, a heartbeat & immediately then I had recovered & on my crutches gripped beneath my arms like paddles or wings & my useless but showy plastic legs swinging I flew past them — swift as an arrow Jane Erdley can move, at such times propelled by adrenaline like a wounded creature.

His face. A startled blur as I flew past on my crutches staring straight ahead & ignoring him. Tyrell, the wife, the two daughters — within seconds I was past them. The younger of the two girls sucked at her fingers murmuring to her mother Ohhh what happened to that lady — oh did it hurt!

Beside her an older sister, ten or eleven, fleshier & resembling the mother crinkled up her face & rudely stared after me.

Ohhh is she crippled? Is she missing her legs? Ohhh that’s ugly.

But already I was past, unseeing. And not a backward glance.

Immediately I left the Mall. Immediately retreating to lick my wounds & to prevent further humiliation & on the bus back to Shore Island my brain in a frenzy replayed the scene. Helpless & furious replaying the scene like one digging at a raw wound with a fingernail.

I did not choose to linger on my guilty lover’s face. For in that moment it was clear that Tyrell Beckmann was not my lover . The man’s allegiance was to his family — the wife, the daughters. In his shocked face & alarmed eyes there was no discernible love for Jane Erdley only just startled recognition & a cowardly terror of being found out, exposed. Instead, I concentrated on the wife — I did not know the wife’s name, Tyrell had not told me — a woman in her late thirties or perhaps older — solid-bodied, husky — brown hair of no discernible style brushed back from her face round as a moon — fleshy cheeks, flushed with color — staring eyes though veiled, unlike her rude daughter — not a striking woman but you could see she’d been attractive when younger, with slackening jowls, a fatty chin — a look of competence, capability about her & yet some slight worry, anxiety — a tiredness in the fleshy-female body — a no-longer-young mother harried by two children of whom the younger was fretting & dragging at her arm & her husband — her prince of a husband — walking a few feet ahead of his family in corduroy slacks, pullover sweater, running shoes frowning as he leafed through a glossy brochure advertising some sort of expensive electrical appliance. In the positioning of wife/mother — husband/father — you could see the dynamics of their family & the thought came to me, as consolation She is wary of losing him. Of course she is anxious, & she is resentful. As she ages, her prince of a husband will remain young.