Joyce Oates - Sourland

Monday night following Easter Sunday when he had to be with his family — a large family gathering at his parents’ house on the Sound — & there seems to have been some stress at this gathering — he doesn’t speak of it, & I will not ask — he is morose, brooding — by the smell of his breath I understand that he has been drinking before he came to the library for me — complaining how his body hadn’t ever “fitted” him right — his left leg especially is “wrong-angled” — only with me, his darling Jane, does his body fit right ; suddenly he confides in me, there was a girl in his grammar school, in fact in kindergarten he’d first seen her, she’d had to use crutches — children’s crutches — & when she was older, a wheelchair — bright steel braces on her legs which were her legs but withered, wasted-away — yet she’d been so pretty — & smart — her name was Wendy — Wendy Hauserman — he’d been fascinated by this girl whose family moved away from Barnegat when they were in sixth grade & later when he was thirteen at summer camp in the Poconos there was the wife of the camp director — a tall blond beautiful woman with a sullen face, wide mouth & gray eyes & rarely smiled — said to be “Swedish” — her hair long & straight & so pale it looked white in certain lights — at dusk, & by firelight — her name was Brigit & she was missing a leg — her left leg, below the knee — half her leg had been amputated after a skiing accident — yet she lay in the sunshine in a bikini on an outcropping of shale, her pale skin oiled & her eyes hidden behind dark glasses & sometimes Brigit wore her prosthetic limb, & sometimes not; sometimes Brigit smiled at the boy-campers, & sometimes not.

“Then — when I first met you…I mean, when I first saw you — on the sidewalk, with your colleagues — I thought…”

Holding my breath & trying not to stiffen in the man’s embrace. He has been stroking my breasts, my stomach, my thighs idly, as if not aware of what he’s doing; since Easter dinner at his family’s house, he has been in a strange unsettled mood; he has smoked several cigarettes, he has not asked if he can smoke in my apartment & I have not told him Please no! The smell of smoke makes me nauseated & numbly I listen to him revert to the familiar account of how he’d first seen me, he has told me this several times in virtually the same words, I am listening in dismay, in disgust & impatience & when he prepares to leave my apartment at midnight I tell him:

“Maybe — please — you should not come back.”

He goes away, he is gone.

He doesn’t call me. He calls.

He sends me a letter, Federal Express. A plain white envelope, a folded sheet of plain white paper.

Dear Jane I love you!!! Only you.I will make you know this. I believe you know this.

He returns to my apartment. He knocks at the door. His is a special knock, a kind of code. I have not answered his phone messages or his frantic emails & so he has driven to Shore Island & stands at my door & I have no choice but to admit him. On my crutches — I open the door. He is unshaven, his white shirt is rumpled & his eyes behind the (crooked) steel-rimmed glasses are ringed in fatigue. In triumph he says, “I left her. It’s over. I told her, I couldn’t continue to live with her, I’m in love with another woman.”

The room is darkened, we grope for each other like blind persons.

“I can change my life, Jane. The externals of my life. If I can be here with you.”

In bed he fits my stumps to his shoulders. He is hot-skinned, trembling. He is rough, agitated — he hurts me, without knowing. His cries are like his nightmare-cries, he’d dismissed so lightly. I feel the jump of his seed inside me, the juice of the man, his most secret life. He is not a young man & yet every cell in his body yearns to impregnate me, the female; what remains of me, the stump-torso, legless & open to the male, vulnerable as a wound. “We could die together. I want to die with you. The two of us together, as in the womb. As if we haven’t been born yet.”

Tangled in the bedclothes we fall asleep. In the night I’m wakened by his breathing, his harsh breathing & the mutterings of his sleep. I kiss his mouth, his breath is heated, moist & sour-smelling. I suck at his breath like a giant cat. His jaws are covered in silvery stubble. Beneath my groping fingers, his penis stirs. The stump-penis, soft & limp as a slug. I rub one of my stumps against it, the sensation is electric — the nerve-endings are not dead, or cauterized, only dormant, awaiting this touch.

We could die together. I want to die with you. It would have been better — the two of us not yet born.

That weekend in Atlantic City at the Trump Casino — where I’ve come alone, by bus. Friday night entering the vast glittering-humming casino & feeling eyes move upon me idly at first, & then — some of them — snagging. In a pool of fish I am a curious-shaped fish — I am a “wounded” specimen. Yet making my way swiftly through the Friday evening crowds — to the blackjack tables — here, my senses are alert — here, I feel a tug of hope — for the occasion I am wearing one of my velvet dresses — luscious dark crimson with a sharp V-neck & a scalloped hemline, lifted at the front to expose the knee — the knees — the steel-gleaming Step Up! knees — & my shoulder-length hair brushed & glossy & pinned back with tortoiseshell combs like a schoolgirl of another era long-ago & romantic & as a novelty — to set me apart from Jane Erdley Circulation — my skin is powdered geisha-white — my mouth is a damp crimson rose, or wound — in mirrors on the casino floor I’ve glimpsed my reflection, I am repelled by my reflection & fascinated thinking Oh is that me? Would Daddy recognize his Jane-Jane, now? I love the way strangers stare at me — the way they step aside, clear a path for me as I fly by them — there is respect for me, a young woman alone, on a Friday night, in Atlantic City, decked out in sleek white arm-support plastic crutches & prosthetic legs — respect & repugnance in about equal measure but at the blackjack table I am a serious gambler — I am totally absorbed in the action — the blackjack dealer (male, mid-thirties, sharp-eyed) is stiff with me, stiff-smiling & avoiding my eye — as if warning me off but I am oblivious — I am not drunk, but I am oblivious — I pay no heed to others observing me — I have just two chips remaining, of five — each chip is worth fifty dollars — in less than an hour I have lost three hundred fifty dollars. At a nearby table a man has been watching me intently — his face is a blur — their faces are always blurs — his hair is a blur of sandy-white — though my impression is, his face is not old — I love the sensation of eyes crawling onto me like ants — unlike ants, these eyes can be shaken off — I can make my way past them defiant & graceful on my crutches — if I am patient at the blackjack table there will be one who will approach me carrying his drink in his hand, his chips in his other hand loose & jangling like coins & he will wait for the opportunity to slip in beside me at the blackjack table guessing it might be time for this rueful cripple-girl-gambler — who appears to be alone in the Trump Casino, 10 P.M. Friday night — to ask to borrow a chip — a chip, or two — to regain my losses — smiling to think how losses sounds like kisses — & bring a cheery smile to my face — such smiles flare up like a sudden struck match here in the glittery gaudy casino — the blurred-faced man is drawing closer, he is an older man yet not an old man & he is somber & sympathetic beside me now observing the blackjack cards from my perspective, observing my set-aside crutches, my lifeless but showy Step Up! legs in black patterned stockings all but hidden by the table & seeing the uplifted card & the flash of its numerals & if it’s a loss, very likely it is a loss, the girl-gambler will wince, suck at her crimson lips & wipe at her eyes & this is the strategic moment for the gentleman to lean a little closer & to say, just audibly above the hum & buzz of the casino — “Excuse me?”