Joyce Oates - Sourland

Is it so obvious , Adrienne wondered. Where I am headed, and why.

She thanked the officer. She moved on. She was carrying her handbag and briefcase against her chest, like a refugee; trying not to think that she might have left something behind on the foyer floor — a crucial document — now scuffed and tattered underfoot — someone in the security line or one of the courthouse staff might have pilfered from her. She was not a racist, she was not a white racist yet she had to acknowledge that the color of her skin singled her out as one of the oppressors of the dark-skinned peoples of the world, that was a fact of history, and of fate; nowhere more evident than here in Trenton, the decaying and depopulated capital city of the State of New Jersey. The widow is one who comes swiftly to the knowledge Whatever harm comes to you, you deserve. For you are still alive.

Not when he’d died — she had been too shocked, too stunned to comprehend that he had died, at that moment — but earlier — on the third or fourth day of his hospitalization — when she’d hurried to her husband’s room on the fifth floor of the hospital — “Telemetry” — and had seen an empty bed, a stripped mattress, no human figure in the bed, no surrounding machines — the thought struck her like a knife-blow He has died, they have taken him away — in that instant the floor had swung up toward her face, the floor had somehow come loose and swung up as she’d lost her footing, her balance, blood rushed out of her brain leaving her faint, helpless, utterly weak, broken and weeping — a nurse’s aide had prevented her from falling — “Mrs. Myer! Your husband has been moved just down the hall” — in an instant her life had ended, yet in the next instant her life had been restored to her; all that would happen to her from now on, she understood, would be random, wayward and capricious.

Now it has begun, now there is nothing to stop it.

The elevators were very slow-moving, crowded. Here too Adrienne was made to feel self-conscious, uneasy. After waiting for several minutes she decided to take the stairs. But what a surprise — these were not ordinary functional stairs but an old-fashioned staircase of carved mahogany, broad and sweeping, baronial; clearly the staircase belonged to an older part of the courthouse. Climbing the curving stairs, gripping the railing, Adrienne found herself staring into a shaft, like a deep pit; the courthouse appeared to be hollow at its core, as if receding in time. Adrienne paused to catch her breath, leaning against the railing, gazing down into the pit-like shaft. She thought This is a temptation for those who are not strong. Or for those who are strong. To end it now.

How close she was, to losing her balance, falling…She’d begun to perspire with anxiety, inside her warm clothing.

Since the first day of her husband’s hospitalization — now just nine days ago — she’d been subject to such flurries of anxiety, dread. She had brought her husband to the ER for he was suffering from an erratic heartbeat and a pronounced shortness of breath; his face was flushed, mottled; his eyes were unnaturally dilated. In the ER he’d been “stabilized” — he’d been kept overnight for cardiac tests — moved from the ER not into the general hospital population but to the seventh floor — “Telemetry” — which Adrienne had not wanted to see was adjacent to “Intensive Care” from that point onward her life became a sequence of linked yet seemingly disjointed episodes accelerated as in a slapstick silent film in which she might have been observed with pitying eyes, like a rat in a maze, compelled to repeat the same futile actions compulsively, unvaryingly, driving her car to the hospital and parking her car, hurriedly entering the hospital and crossing the wide lobby whose floor smelled of fresh disinfectant and taking one of the elevators to Telemetry, fifth floor, exiting the elevator and hurrying along the corridor to her husband’s room — steeling herself for what she might see, or not see, as she approached the doorway — as she approached the bed, and the white-clad figure reclining, or sitting up, in the bed —

On the curving baronial stairs Adrienne became light-headed. A woman with toffee-colored skin clutched at her arm, deftly. “Ma’am? You havin some kind of faint?” Adrienne murmured no, no she was fine, though her lips had gone numb, blood had rushed out of her face. The woman gripped her arm and helped her on the stairs. She knows where I am headed Adrienne thought.

On the next floor, Adrienne had to make her way through a long line of individuals filing into a vast assembly room. Here were far more light-skinned men and women than she’d seen in any other part of the courthouse, most of them well dressed and all of them wearing jurors’ badges; how plausible it would appear to a neutral observer, that Adrienne Myer had been summoned to the Mercer County Courthouse this morning for jury duty ; she felt a stab of envy for these individuals, a powerful wish to be one of them, that her reason for being here was so impersonal, so banal and so easily resolved.

On the next floor — was this the third, or the fourth? — Adrienne found herself in another crowded corridor — here was the Office of the Public Defender . On a long wooden bench against a wall festooned with warnings — NO SMOKING — NO FOOD OR DRINK IN THE COURTROOM — DO NOT BRING CONTRABAND INTO THE COURTHOUSE — were seated a number of mostly young men, under the eye of several Mercer County sheriff’s deputies; all but two of the young men were dark-skinned, and all were wearing lurid-orange jumpsuits marked MERCER CO. MENS DETENTION. All were shackled at the wrists and ankles, like beasts.

Adrienne tried not to stare seeing one of the white men close by, slouching on the bench; he had a sharp hawkish face disfigured by an aggressively ugly tattoo jagged like lightning bolts; his rat-colored hair was pulled back into a tail — a rat-tail? Was this — what was the name — Ezra, Edro? — Edro Hodge? — the person whom Leisha had been desperate to contact? Hodge’s eyes were heavy-lidded, drooping; he gave an impression of being oblivious of his surroundings, if not contemptuous. Adrienne slipped past not wanting to attract his attention.

One floor up — two floors? — at last, Probate Court: the Office of the Surrogate.

“Ma’am — here.”

Before Adrienne was allowed into the waiting room of the Office of the Surrogate she was required to show a photo I.D — fumbling for her wallet which contained her driver’s license, but where was her wallet? — had someone taken her wallet, in the confusion downstairs? — in a panic locating her U.S. passport in the briefcase at which a woman deputy stared suspiciously — “This you, ma’am? Don’t look much like you .”

The photo was several years old, Adrienne said. Though having to acknowledge that the woman in the photo, lightly smiling, with a smooth, unlined forehead and hopeful eyes, bore little resemblance to the woman she was now.

“This is my name, though — ‘Adrienne Myer.’ My husband’s name is — was — Myer.”

How unconvincing this sounded! The very syllables — Adrienne Myer — had become nonsensical, mocking.

For if once she’d been married to a man named Myer , the man named Myer no longer existed; where did that leave Adrienne Myer ?

Nonetheless, Adrienne was allowed to take a seat. The air in the waiting room was steam-heated, stale. Here was a vast space larger even than the jurors’ assembly room on the lower floor — a high-ceilinged room in sepia tones like an old daguerreotype, with high narrow windows that seemed to look out over nothing — unless the glass had become scummy and opaque with grime. Adrienne was nervously conscious of rows — rows! — of uncomfortable vinyl chairs crowded with people — their expressions ranged from melancholy to exhausted, anxious to resigned. At the rear of the waiting room the farther wall appeared to have dissolved into sepia shadow — the waiting room stretched on forever. Blindly Adrienne was seated clutching at her things — handbag, briefcase — she’d removed her black cashmere coat in this stifling heat — a glove had fallen to the floor, she retrieved with some effort — she’d been gripping her things so tightly, the bones of her hands ached. She was thinking All these people have died! So many of us.