Joyce Oates - Sourland

Through the girl’s torrent of words a crude melancholy narrative emerged like a wounded animal, limping — Adrienne saw clearly. She felt a stab of sympathy for the poor battered girl but her better judgment urged her caution. Take care! Don’t be foolish, Adrienne! Don’t get involved.

Adrienne shivered. Her husband’s voice, close in her ear.

Tracy was not one to get involved. Tracy was one for caution.

“I wish that I could help you,” Adrienne said, “but I–I’m already late for — ”

“You got some paper, ma’am? Somethin to write with? All you’d need to hand him is some little thing — it could just say like Leisha has retracted — or, just L. has retracted. He’d know right-away what that meant.”

“I–I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have time to — ”

“Ma’am, fuck that! Ma’am, sure you do. ”

So forcibly Leisha spoke, so glittery her tarry-black eyes, Adrienne found herself meekly providing the girl with a page torn from an address book, and a pen. Leisha scribbled a message onto the scrap of paper while Adrienne glanced anxiously about.

The rear entrance to the courthouse was about twenty feet away. A steady stream of people were entering, mostly individuals. Some were uniformed law enforcement officers. No one took note of Adrienne and the girl in the faux -fur coat.

“You can’t miss Edro Hodge, ma’am — left side of his face has this like Apache tattoo, and his hair in a rat-tail. And Edro has got these eyes , ma’am — you will know him when you see him when it’s like he sees you down to the roots of your shoes.”

Roots of your shoes. These eyes. Adrienne wanted to laugh, this was so absurd. This was so ridiculous, reckless. Leisha pressed the folded note into Adrienne’s fingers and Adrienne was about to take it then drew back as if she’d touched a snake. No no don’t get involved. Not ever. Quickly she backed away from the staring girl saying she was sorry, very sorry, she couldn’t help her — “I’m late for Probate Court! Please understand.”

Adrienne turned, fled. Adrienne walked quickly in her soft-leather boots, desperate not to slip on the icy pavement. At the courthouse entrance a uniformed police officer gestured to Adrienne, to step ahead of him. Maybe he was thinking she hadn’t enough strength to push the revolving door. Was she so ghastly-pale, did she carry herself so precariously? The girl was shouting after her, pleading — “Ma’am wait — ma’am damn you — ma’am !”

“Ma’am? Step along, please.”

Blindly Adrienne made her halting way through the security checkpoint. What a clamorous place this was, and unheated — overhead a high gray-tinctured ceiling, underfoot an aged and very dirty marble floor. Most of the others shuffling in the line were dark-skinned. Most wore work clothes, or were carelessly or poorly dressed, with sullen or expressionless faces. Adrienne stepped aside to allow a stout middle-aged black woman with an elderly mother to precede her but a security guard intervened speaking sharply: “Ma’am — put your things down here. Step along, ma’am.”

Trying not to think Because I am white. I am the minority here.

It was so: the only other Caucasian in view was a sheriff’s deputy stationed in the inner lobby.

She was not a racist. Yet her hammering heart rebuked her — Now you are helpless, they have you.

Her husband had been an academic, a historian. His field of specialization had been twentieth-century European history, after World War I. Like a time traveler he’d moved deftly from the present into the past — from the past into the present — though he had lived with horrors, he’d seemed to Adrienne curiously untouched by his discoveries, intellectually engaged rather more than emotionally engaged. A historian is a kind of scientist, he’d believed. A historian collects and analyzes data, he must take care not to impose his personal beliefs, his theories of history, upon this data. Adrienne had once entered Tracy’s study when he was assembling a book-length manuscript to send to his editor at Harvard University Press — chapters and loose pages were scattered across his desk and table and she’d had a fleeting glimpse of photographs he’d hidden from her — scenes of Nazi death-camps? Holocaust survivors? — she’d asked what these were and Tracy had said, “You don’t want to know, Adrienne.”

Adrienne had protested, but not strongly. Essentially he’d been right — she had not wanted to know.

How concerned for her Tracy would be, if he could see her here, alone. For why on earth was she here.

Never had they spoken of death-duties. The subject had never arisen — for why should it have arisen? Tracy had not expected to die, not for a long time. He’d been a “fit” man — he exercised, he ate and drank sparingly, he was steeped in the sort of health-knowledge common to people of his education and class. Knowing is a form of immortality. Ignorance is the only weakness, and that can be prevented.

So it had seemed to them. Now Adrienne had lost faith, she’d been staggered, stunned. Her husband’s knowledge had not saved him. No more than a house of ordinary dimensions could withstand a hurricane or an earthquake.

“Ma’am — remove your coat, please. And your boots. Step along.”

Adrienne did as she was told. She placed her things in trays on the conveyer belt to pass through the X-ray machine, as at an airport. Yet there was a harshness here, an air of suspicion on the part of the security staff, she had not experienced while traveling on either domestic or foreign flights. She was told to open her handbag for inspection, in addition to placing it in the tray; as she struggled to open her husband’s heavy leather briefcase, which contained several folders of legal documents, some of these documents fell to the floor. Awkwardly Adrienne stooped, her face warm with embarrassment, and reached for the papers. “Ma’am? You needin some help?” A male guard with skin the color of burnt cork stooped to help her retrieve the papers which had scattered on the damp, dirty floor amid the feet of strangers. How had this happened — these were precious documents! One was a notarized IRS form for the previous year, another was the death certificate issued for Tracy Emmet Myer on stiff gray-green paper resembling the paper used for U.S. currency and stamped with the New Jersey State seal. Somehow, there was Adrienne’s husband’s wallet being handed to her — and his wristwatch — which Adrienne had removed from the hospital room after his death and must have placed inside the briefcase without remembering she’d done so. The wallet was unnervingly light, flat — all the bills, credit cards and other items must have been taken from it — and the wristwatch had a broken face as if it had been stepped on. “This yours, too?” — the guard held out to Adrienne a scrap of paper upon which she saw scribbled handwriting — barely legible except for the oversized schoolgirl signature LEISHA.

Leisha! The aggressive girl in the faux -fur jacket and corn-rowed hair had somehow succeeded in thrusting the note to her lover into Adrienne’s briefcase — how was this possible? Adrienne remembered clearly having refused it, and walking quickly away.

Numbly she took the note from the guard, and the other items, and returned them to the briefcase. Her face throbbed with heat, she was aware of strangers staring at her. How quickly it had happened, Adrienne Myer had become that person, very often a woman, an older woman, who in public places draws the pitying or annoyed stares of others because she has dropped something, or has forgotten something, or has lost something, or has come to the wrong address and is holding up the line… She was fumbling now to put on her boots, and her coat. And where was her glove, had she dropped a glove…The deputy overseeing the checkpoint, a lieutenant, with a dim roughened skin that wasn’t nearly so Caucasian as Adrienne had imagined from a short distance, had come over to see what was wrong. Politely he said, “Ma’am? Where you headed — sur’gate?” When Adrienne stared blankly at him he said: “Office of the Sur’gate? Probate Court?” Bemusedly his eyes moved over her: the black cashmere coat that fell to midcalf, expensive but hastily misbuttoned, the expensive leather boots defaced by salt as by graffiti. “Probate is fifth floor, ma’am. Elevators through that doorway.”