Joyce Oates - Sourland

He lived! He did live, he survived.

He died. “Passed away.” There was nothing to be done.

Yet at this time, I was safe from such knowledge. At this time, my father, Harvey Fleet, was still alive.

“Madelyn?”

Vaguely I had been aware of someone approaching my table, coming up behind me, as frequently individuals were making their way past in this crowded space, and I had been aware of someone pausing, looming over me. I looked up in expectation of seeing one of my male relatives but instead I saw a man whom I didn’t recognize at first, with a two days’ growth of beard on his jaws, amber-tinted sunglasses, and thick disheveled graying hair that seemed to rise like a geyser at the crown of his head. “Madelyn Fleet. It is you.” The surprise was that this man was my seventh-grade math teacher, Mr. Carmichael, whom I had not seen in more than two years and then only in our school building. The way in which Mr. Carmichael had intoned Madelyn Fleet was his teacherly teasing way, which I remembered. I had to remember too, with a quick stab of emotion, that I’d been in love with Mr. Carmichael, in secret, when I was twelve years old.

Now I was fourteen, and much changed. In my former teacher’s eyes this change was being registered.

Smiling down at me, Mr. Carmichael was smoking a cigarette for in 1959 it was not forbidden to smoke cigarettes in a hospital, even in most hospital rooms. How strange it was to see my seventh-grade math teacher unshaven as none of his students had ever seen him, and his hair that had always been trimmed short now grown long, curling languidly behind his ears, and threaded with silvery gray wires. It was a warmly humid midsummer and so Mr. Carmichael had rolled up his shirtsleeves to his elbows; the cuffs hung free, at a rakish angle. The front of Mr. Carmichael’s shirt was damp with perspiration and looked as if it hadn’t been changed in days. From such signs I understood that Mr. Carmichael too was an anxious visitor to Sparta Memorial Hospital, yet even in his state of distraction and dread he was smiling at me, and his eyes behind the tinted lenses of his glasses were alert and intense in a way I did not remember from when I’d been his student. When he inquired what I was reading I had no choice but to show him the cover of the book, which was a novel by H. G. Wells that elicited from Mr. Carmichael a remark meant to be clever and knowing, for at our school Mr. Carmichael — whose first name we giggled to see was Luther — had a reputation for being clever and knowing if also, at times, sarcastic, sardonic, and inscrutable; a teacher who graded harshly, at times; for which reason, while some girl students admired Mr. Carmichael and strove to please him, most of our classmates were uncomfortable in his classes, and disliked him. Even boys who laughed at Mr. Carmichael’s jokes did not wholly trust him, for he could turn on you, if you were not cautious. There were rumors about Mr. Carmichael being complained of by the parents of certain students and perhaps by certain of his fellow teachers and vaguely last year I’d heard that Mr. Carmichael no longer taught at the school…. As if he could hear my thoughts and wished to commandeer them, Mr. Carmichael leaned over me, saying, in a lowered voice, that he thought he’d recognized me as I crossed the lobby and came here to sit, he’d thought it might be me — “Or some older sister of little Madelyn Fleet” — but he wasn’t sure that he could trust his eyes — “You’ve gotten taller, Madelyn. And you carry yourself — differently.” In embarrassed confusion I laughed, leaning away from him; my face throbbed with blood; I was overwhelmed by such attention, and did not know how to reply. There was nowhere to look except at Mr. Carmichael’s flushed and roughened face, and his eyes so warmly intent upon me beyond the smudged lenses of his sunglasses. Mr. Carmichael’s breath smelled of — was it whiskey? — a sweetish-sour odor with which I was long familiar, for all my male relatives drank whiskey at times, and certainly my father drank whiskey. It had not been the case during my year of seventh-grade math that Mr. Carmichael had singled me out for any particular attention, or praise; I could not have claimed that Mr. Carmichael had ever really looked at me, as an individual; though I’d been one of five or six reliable students who’d usually received high grades, I hadn’t been an outstanding math student, only a doggedly diligent good-girl student. Nor had I been one of the popular and flirtatious girls in our class who’d had no trouble attracting Mr. Carmichael’s attention. Yet now he was asking, “Why are you here in this depressing place, Madelyn? I hope it isn’t a family emergency….” He did not seem to be teasing but spoke sincerely, with sympathy; lightly his hand rested on my shoulder, to comfort. I was frightened now for such sympathy left me weak, defenseless; I did not want to cry; in my bedroom I’d cried until my eyes were reddened and swollen like blisters but I had not cried in front of anyone except my mother. It would be held against Harvey Fleet’s daughter that she was “cold” — “snotty” — stiffening in her relatives’ embraces and shrinking from their kisses with a look of disdain. Yet how could I bring myself to say to Mr. Carmichael, My father is upstairs in the intensive care unit, he had surgery this morning to reduce swelling in his brain, he has not regained consciousness after a terrible beating …. Quickly I told Mr. Carmichael that my mother had come to see a friend in the hospital who’d had minor surgery and I’d been with them for a while then became restless, couldn’t breathe, came downstairs to read my novel but couldn’t concentrate, and now I was thinking of going home. (For suddenly it came to me; I could leave this hateful place, I could go home without my mother.) Mr. Carmichael said he’d had enough of the hospital too. More than enough. He’d drive me home, Mr. Carmichael said now, nudging my ponytail, and I laughed, saying thank you but I could take a city bus, or I could walk. (In the heat, the three-mile walk would be punishing. My mother would be astonished and would not know if she should be apologetic or disgusted with me.) Mr. Carmichael squinted down at me through his sunglasses, saying in his brisk-bemused-teacher voice that his car was out back: “C’mon, Madelyn. I’ll drive you home.”

How was it possible to say no ?

“This is a little detour, kid. Our secret.”

It was dusk. We were late returning home. Yet we were driving east along the river, back toward Sparta. If we’d been headed home, as we were expected, my father would have been driving us west. The air at dusk was humid and porous as gauze and through the Cadillac’s lowered windows warm air rushed that smelled of something overripe like rotted fruit and beneath, a fainter, sour smell of rotted fish.

It was a festive time of evening! I was very happy. On the river there were ghostly white sailboats and power-driven boats that glittered with lights against the darkening, choppy water and on shore, in the park where the blues festival was being held, there were steadier lights like flames.

A detour. Our secret. These mysterious pronouncements of my father’s were usually made in a playful voice that carried an unmistakable warning: do as I say, without acknowledging that I have said it.

By these words I was given to understand that my father didn’t want my mother to know we’d gone back into the city. I liked it that there were such understandings between my father and me, which excluded my mother.

On the evening of the beating that was never to be explained, for which no “assailant” or “assailants” would ever be charged, my father was distracted and appeared to be in a hurry. We’d left the blues festival abruptly for he’d said that we had to get home and now, not ten minutes later, he was headed for downtown Sparta and his office on East Capitol Street. Gripped between his legs was a bottle of ale he’d brought with him from the festival. The dashboard of the car gleamed and glittered with so many dials, switches, controls you’d have thought you were in the cockpit of a fighter plane.