Joyce Oates - Sourland

Of course, Woody would have another woman by now. Women. That was obvious.

He fumbled in his pocket, gave Yvonne his business card. He brushed his lips, that felt parched, against her cheek. Like a man out of breath he said, “O.K. look, what we said — if you want to, you know, pursue it.” This was a new business card of Woodrow Clark, Jr.’s, made of a stiffer material than the old. It would have e-mail, cell phone information on it, as the old card had not.

She didn’t watch Woody maneuver the Land Rover out of the parking lot. She knew he expected it, but no. She was in a hurry, too.

By 1:35 P.M., Yvonne was driving east on the Thruway. She’d slipped Woody’s business card into the envelope with the death certificate, for safekeeping. What was worrying her immediately was, the adrenaline charge she’d felt, first seeing Woody, that had lit her up like a Christmas tree, was rapidly receding now. You could practically see the brave little glitter-lights going out one by one. If she wasn’t careful she’d have one of her blinding migraines on the drive to Albany. This feeling of fatigue, a taste of something sour and brackish like panic. Sometimes all that was required to set off a migraine was a sudden sharp knife-blade of light reflected off the hood, windshield, chrome of another vehicle. A pulse beat in her head, behind her eyes, in warning. Not even the dark glasses could spare her, if a migraine was imminent.

“Yes, maybe.” Her lips moved, in answer to a question. But what was the question?

She stopped the car on the Thruway shoulder, impulsively. Woody’s card — what had she done with Woody’s card? Anxiously she checked the manila envelope containing the death certificate — yes, it was there.

The party was in full swing — like a cruise ship that has left the dock and is plying its way through choppy waves out of the harbor — glittering with lights and giddy with voices, laughter, music. The party was her party — hers and her husband’s — in fact, today was her husband’s birthday — at the farther end of the living room Harris was in a fever-pitch of conversation surrounded by his oldest friends who’d been post-docs with him at MIT in Noam Chomsky’s lab, 1963–64 — he wouldn’t detect her absence she was sure.

Seven-fifty P.M. — near-dusk — a strategic moment for the hostess to slip away between the swell of arrivals, greetings, cocktails and appetizers and the (large, informal) buffet supper that would scatter guests through the downstairs rooms of the sprawling old Tudor house at 49 Foxcroft Circle, University Heights.

How many years the Zalks had hosted this party, or its variants! Leah Zalk took a childlike pleasure seeing her house through the eyes of others — how the rented tables were covered in dusky-pink tablecloths — not the usual utilitarian white — how the forsythia sprigs she’d cut the previous day from shrubs alongside the house were blossoming dazzling-yellow in tall vases against the walls — how beautiful, flickering candlelight in all the rooms — track lighting illuminating a wall of Harris’s remarkable photographs taken on his travels into the wilder parts of the earth — in a farther corner of the living room a guest who was clearly a trained pianist was playing cheery show-tunes, dance tunes of another era — “Begin the Beguine” — “Heart and Soul” — alternating with flamboyant passages of Liszt — the rapid nervous rippling notes of the Transcendental Etudes that Leah had once tried to play as a girl pianist long ago.

A party in full swing . What a relief, to escape.

Between her eyes was a steely-cold throb of pain. Quickly it came and went like flashing neon she had no wish to acknowledge.

Leah made her way through the crowded dining room and into the kitchen where the caterer’s assistants were working — made her way through the back hall to the rear of the house — pushed open a door that opened onto a rarely used back porch — and was astonished — disconcerted — to see someone leaning against the railing, smoking — a guest? — a friend? — this individual would have to be an old friend of the Zalks, who’d had the nerve to make his way into the rear of the house to the back porch — yet Leah didn’t recognize him when he turned with a startled smile, cigarette smoke lifting from his mouth like a curving tusk.

“Mrs. Zalk? Hey — h’lo.”

The young man’s greeting was bright, ebullient, slightly overloud.

Leah smiled a bright-hostess smile: “Hello! Do I know you?”

He was no one she knew — no one she recognized — in his mid-or late twenties — somewhat heavy, fattish-faced — yet boyish — looming above her at six foot three or four — with bleached-looking pale blond hair curling over his shirt collar — moist and slightly protuberant pale-blue eyes behind stylish wire-rimmed glasses — an edgy air of familiarity or intimacy. Was Leah supposed to know this young man? Clearly he knew her .

He bore little resemblance to Harris’s graduate and post-doc students and could hardly have been one of Harris’s colleagues at the Institute — he had a foppish air of entitlement and clearly thought well of himself. He wore an expensive-looking camel’s hair sport jacket and a black silk shirt with a pleated front — open at the throat, with no necktie — his trousers were dark, sharp-pressed — his shoes were black Italian loafers. In his left earlobe a gold stud glittered and on his left wrist — a thick-boned wrist, covered in coarse hairs — a white gold stretch-band watch gleamed. A cavalier slouch of his broad shoulders made him look as if, beneath the sport jacket that fitted him tightly, small wings were folded against his upper back.

A coarse sort of angel, Leah thought, with stubby nicotine-stained fingers and a smile just this side of insolent.

“Certainly you know me, Mrs. Zalk — ‘Leah.’ Though it’s been a while.”

How embarrassing! Leah had no doubt that she knew, or should have known, the young blond man. As she’d pushed out blindly onto the porch she’d been rubbing the bridge of her nose where the alarming pain had sprung — she wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see her with anything other than a hostess’s calmly smiling face — if Harris knew he’d have been surprised, and concerned for her.

Leah could not have told Harris how early that morning — in the chill dark of 4 A.M. — she’d wakened with a headache — a sensation of dread for this party they’d hosted every spring, at about the time of Harris’s birthday. Somehow over the years the Zalks’ party in May had become a custom, or a tradition in the Institute community: their friends, colleagues, and neighbors had come to expect it. Through the long day Leah had felt stress, mounting anxiety. She was sure that Harris had been inviting guests by phone and e-mail, far-flung colleagues of his, former students of whom there were so many, without remembering to tell her, and that far more than sixty guests would arrive at the house…

“Yes. A while…”

“How long, I wonder? Five, six years…”

“Well. That might be…”

“ You’re looking well, Mrs. Zalk!”

Now Leah remembered: this emphatic young man was the son of friends whom she and Harris saw only a few times a year, though the Gottschalks, like the Zalks, lived in the older, west-end neighborhood of University Heights. The young man had an odd first name — and he’d matured alarmingly — Leah was sure that the last time she’d seen him he’d been an adolescent of twelve or thirteen with a pudgy child’s face, a shy manner, hardly Leah’s height. Now he carried his excess weight well, bursting with health and vigor and an air of scarcely suppressed elation like an athlete eager to confront his competition.