Joyce Oates - The Gravedigger’s Daughter

“A man, a very nice man. A man in a panama hat-”

“Mommy, what? A banana hat?”

Niley laughed in disbelief. Rebecca laughed, too.

Why the hell had she begun telling this story, she couldn’t imagine. To impress a three-year-old? Out of the crayon box she selected a black crayon to draw a stick-man and on the stick-man’s silly round head with the yellow crayon she drew a banana hat. The banana was disproportionately large for the stick-man’s head, and upright. Niley giggled and kicked and squirmed with pleasure. He grabbed at the crayons to draw his own stick-man with a tilted-over banana hat.

“For Dad- dy . Banana hat.”

“Daddy doesn’t wear a hat, sweetie.”

“Why not? Why doesn’t Daddy wear a hat?”

“Well, we can get Daddy a hat. A banana hat. We can make a banana hat for Daddy…”

They laughed together, planning Daddy’s banana hat. Rebecca gave in to childish nonsense, she supposed it must be harmless. The things that child imagines!-Mrs. Meltzer shook her head, you could not determine if she was amused, or alarmed. Rebecca smiled, Rebecca shook her head, too. She worried that Niley wasn’t developing as other children developed. His brain seemed to function like the jerky conveyor belt. His attention span was fierce but brief. You could not hope to follow through a line of thinking or of speaking, Niley had no patience for tales that went on for more than a few seconds. Unless you imposed your will upon the child, as Rebecca sometimes did, in exasperation. Otherwise the child led you wandering, stumbling. A blizzard of broken-off thoughts, snatches of misheard words. She felt at such times that she would drown in the child’s small fevered brain, she was a tiny adult figure trapped in a child’s brain.

She had wanted desperately to be a mother. And so she was a mother.

She had wanted desperately to be Niles Tignor’s wife. And so she was Niles Tignor’s wife.

These irrefutable facts she was trying to explain to the man in the panama hat who stood gazing at her with his small, hurt smile. His eyes were myopic, almost you could see the fine scrim of myopia over them, like scum on water. His gray-blond hair so curiously molded. Smile lines deep-etched in his face that was an old-young face, faded and yet strangely boyish, hopeful. He was a courteous man you could see, a gentleman. Convinced that the slatternly young woman in the factory clothes was lying to him yet appealing to her anyway.

A man of science and reason .

At least take my card .

If you should ever wish to …

In the telephone directory for the Greater Chautauqua Valley she looked up Jones . There were eleven Joneses all of them male, or initials which might mean male or female. Not a single woman, so designated. Not a single listing H. Jones .

This didn’t surprise her. For obviously, Byron Hendricks must have consulted the directory, many times. He must have called some of these Joneses, in his search for Hazel Jones.

“Asshole! What a stupid thing to do.”

One night Rebecca woke from sleep to the realization, that struck her like a punch to the gut, that she was a careless mother, a bad mother: she’d stuck away the makeshift weapon, the seven-inch piece of steel, in a bureau drawer, where Niley who was always rummaging through her things might find it.

She took it out, and examined it. The steel was nasty-looking but not so sharp, overall. She’d have had to stab desperately with it to defend herself.

Anyway, she’d been wrong about the man in the panama hat. He had not meant to hurt her, he’d only just confused her with someone else. Why she’d become so upset, she didn’t know. She, Rebecca, was low, primitive in her suspicions.

Yet she didn’t throw the piece of steel away, but wrapped it in a tattered old sweater of hers kept high on a closet shelf where Niley, and Tignor, would never find it.

Two nights later, Tignor called.

“Yes? Who is it?”

“Who’d you think, girl?”

He had that power: to render her helpless.

She sank onto a kitchen chair, suddenly weak. Somehow, Niley knew. Running from the other room crying, “Dad- dy ? Dad- dy ?”

Niley plunged into his mother’s lap, hot, eel-like, quivering with excitement. His devotion for his father was ardent and unquestioning as a young puppy’s for its master. Still, he knew not to snatch at the phone, as he wanted to; he knew he would speak with Daddy when Daddy was ready to speak with him, and not before.

Rebecca would recall afterward that she’d had no premonition that Tignor would call that night. Since falling in love with the man she had become superstitious, it was a weakness of love she supposed, even a skeptical mind is prey to omens, portents. But she had not expected to hear Tignor’s voice on the other end of the line, she’d had no preparation.

Tignor was telling Rebecca he would be back, back with her and the boy, by the end of the week.

Tignor never said he’d be back home . Only just back with you and the boy .

Rebecca asked where Tignor was, was he still in Port au Roche?-but Tignor ignored the question. He never answered questions put bluntly to him. And his telephone voice was one of forced heartiness, jovial and impersonal as a radio announcer’s voice.

Only in close quarters, was Tignor capable of intimacy. Only where he could touch, stroke, squeeze. Only when he made love to her, was Rebecca really certain that he was with her.

Physically, at least.

Telling her now there’d been a little trouble. But it was blown over now.

“Trouble? What kind of…?”

But Tignor wouldn’t answer, Rebecca knew. It was some kind of business trouble, rivalry with another brewery maybe. She had not heard of any trouble, and so it was best to fall in with Tignor’s tone. Blown over .

When Tignor was away, Rebecca kept a road map of New York state spread out onto the floor, to show Niley where Daddy was, or where Mommy believed Daddy was. She dreaded the child guessing that Mommy didn’t always know. That Mommy might be misinformed. For Daddy’s territory was vast, from Chautauqua Falls where they lived at the western edge of the state across the breadth of the state to the Hudson Valley, and north to the Adirondack Mountains and east to Lake Champlain where a town the size of Port au Roche was no more than a poppy-seed-sized dot on the map, even smaller than Chautauqua Falls.

Now, what was Tignor telling her? Something to make her laugh?

She understood: I must laugh .

This was important. Early on, in her relationship with Niles Tignor, she knew to laugh at his jokes, and to make jokes, herself. Nobody wants a heavy-hearted girl for Christ sake.

And: in the places Tignor frequented there were numerous girls and women vying with one another to laugh at his jokes. There always had been, before Rebecca had known Tignor, and there always would be, though he was her husband. She understood I am one of these . I owe it to him, to be happy .

“Niley, behave! Be good.”

She whispered in the boy’s ear, he was becoming impatient.

But Tignor was speaking to someone at the other end of the line. His hand over the receiver, she couldn’t make out his words. Was he arguing? Or just explaining something?

How uncomfortable she was: in this chair, Niley squirming on her lap, her heart beating so hard it ached, snarly hair, damp from being washed, trailing down her back wetting her clothes.

She wondered what the man in the panama hat would think, seeing her. At least, he would recognize that she was a mother, and a wife. He would not confuse her with…

Tignor asked to speak with Niley. Rebecca handed over the phone.