Joyce Oates - The Gravedigger’s Daughter

Hazel shook her head slowly. Young?

“”Hazel Jones’ The name is known to me, but not why. Can you explain why, my dear?“

Hazel said lightly, “There are probably ”Hazel Joneses‘-Mr. Gallagher. More than one.“

“Well! Don’t let me upset you, my dear. I’m feeling guilty, I suppose. I seem to have upset my overly sensitive radical son, who has run off and left us.”

Briskly then Thaddeus pressed one of the buttons on the wheelchair. Hazel heard no sound but within seconds a male attendant appeared, in T-shirt, swim trunks, carrying terry cloth robes and towels. This young man called Thaddeus “Mr. G.” and was called by the older man what sounded like “Peppy.” He was about twenty-five, darkly tanned, with a blandly affable boy’s face; he had a swimmer’s physique, long-waisted, with broad wing-like shoulders. Hazel saw his eyes slide onto her, swiftly assessing yet vacant. He was one who knew his place: a wealthy invalid’s physical therapist.

“Will you join me, Hazel? They say I must swim every day, to keep my condition from ”progressing.“ Of course, my condition ”progresses’ in any case. Such is life!“

Hazel declined the invitation. She came to assist Peppy as he helped Thaddeus into the pool, at the shallow end: this was a Hazel Jones gesture, spontaneous and friendly.

“My dear, thank you! I hate the water, until I get into it.”

Peppy fastened red plastic water wings onto the obese man, over his fatty shoulders and across his immense drooping bosom. Slowly then he helped Thaddeus into the water with the frowning attentiveness of a mother helping her clumsy, somewhat fearful child into the water, that shimmered and quaked about him. Hazel offered her hand. And how grateful Thaddeus was, gripping her hand. As his weight slipped into the water like a bag of concrete Thaddeus squeezed Hazel’s slender fingers in a sudden helpless panic. Then, as if miraculously, Thaddeus was in the pool, wheezing, paddling with childlike abandon. Peppy walked and then swam beside him slowly. Thaddeus was laughing, winking up at Hazel who followed his slow progress through the now choppy water, walking at the edge of the pool.

“Hazel! You must join us. The water is perfect, isn’t it, Peppy?”

“Sure is, Mr. G.”

Hazel laughed. Her pretty dress had been splashed, and would stink of chlorine.

“Really, Hazel,” Thaddeus said, holding his head erect out of the water, with an absurd dignity, “you must join us. You’ve come so far.” The motions of his hefty arms were energetic, those of his atrophied legs feeble.

“I don’t have a bathing suit, Mr. Gallagher.”

“”Thad‘! You promised.“

“”Thad.“”

Thaddeus was enlivened again, with a frantic gaiety.

“There are women’s bathing suits in the changing rooms, over there. Please, go look.”

Hazel stood irresolute. Almost, to spite her lover she was tempted.

As if reading her thoughts Thaddeus said slyly, “You must, dear! To show up my cowardly son. He fled, he’s afraid of his old crippled father who has prostate cancer, and a touch of colon cancer to boot. But do you see Thaddeus slinking away in cowardly defeat? You do not .”

Hazel knew not to react to this disclosure. Never must she make any reference to Thaddeus Gallagher’s health. She would pretend she had not heard. Carefully she removed her high-heeled sandals, to walk barefoot at the edge of the pool. Her legs were long, supple with muscle. Her legs were smooth, shaven. It was a fetish with Hazel Jones to shave her legs, thighs and armpits and other areas of her body that might betray her by sprouting dark, rather curly coarse hairs. As Hazel Jones ate sparingly, to remain Hazel Jones who was slender, very feminine and very pretty. In the smelly aqua water, Thaddeus Gallagher strained to watch her.

He could not speak very clearly, paddling and splashing with his absurd water wings. Yet he kept calling to Hazel as one might call to a perverse child. “Surely you can swim, dear? Nothing would happen to you, with Peppy and me at hand.”

Hazel laughed. “I don’t think so, Thad. Thank you.”

“And if I gave you a gift, dear? A thousand dollars.”

Thaddeus meant to speak in such a way that Hazel could interpret the remark as a joke, and not be offended. But the words came out awkwardly, his glassy blinking eyes stared and strained at her.

Hazel shook her head, no.

“Five thousand!” Thaddeus cried gaily.

An old man’s harmless teasing. He was falling in love with Hazel Jones. Cavorting in the water, making even Peppy laugh. Paddling and splashing and kicking and wheezing like a baby elephant. His behavior was so ludicrous, so strangely touching, Hazel had to laugh.

“My dear, don’t abandon me! Please.”

He’d thought that Hazel was walking away. She’d gone only to examine a lattice of crimson climber roses, against a cream-colored stucco wall.

After a few more minutes, Thaddeus abruptly ordered Peppy to haul him out of the pool. Again, Hazel Jones came to help: took the old man’s big fleshy hand, that gripped hers tightly. Hazel also brought towels, terry cloth robes for both men. Thaddeus wrapped the enormous towels about his body, rubbing himself briskly. His thinning hair that lay now flat against the big dome of his head, he dried as energetically as he might have done in his youth when his hair was thick. It was exactly Gallagher’s practice. Hazel saw this, and felt some tenderness for Thaddeus.

In his wheelchair, wrapped in towels large as blankets, Thaddeus puffed and panted and smiled, exhilarated. The white-jacketed servant had brought him another scarlet drink as well as a silver bowl of mixed nuts which he ate noisily.

“Hazel Jones! I must confess I’d heard certain things about you. Now I see, none of them were true.”

Thaddeus spoke in a lowered voice. He kept glancing back at the house, concerned that his son would reappear.

He reached out to take Hazel’s hand. She shivered but did not pull away.

“My son is a man of integrity, I know. I have quarrels with him but in his own way, yes of course he is ”moral.“ I wish that I knew how to love him, Hazel! He has never forgiven me, you see, for things that happened long ago. He has told you, I suppose?” Thaddeus squinted wistfully at Hazel.

“No. He has not.”

“He has not ?”

“Never.”

“He complains about my politics, surely? My convictions that are so very different from his?”

“Chet only speaks of you with respect. He loves you, Mr. Gallagher. But he’s afraid of you.”

“Afraid of me! Why?”

There was something furtive and sick in Thaddeus’s face. Yet a glimmering of hope.

“You should ask Chet, Mr. Gallagher. I can’t speak for him.”

“Yes, yes: you can speak for him. Far better you can speak for him, Hazel Jones, than he can speak for himself.” The old man’s pose of drollery had quite fallen away, now he was fully earnest. Almost, he was pleading with Hazel. “He loves me? He respects me?”

“He thinks that your political beliefs are mistaken. That’s all.”

“He has never said anything about-his mother?”

“Only that he loved her. And misses her.”

“Does he! I do, too.”

Thaddeus and Hazel were alone on the terrace. Both Peppy and the servant in the white jacket had departed. Thaddeus sat swathed in white terry cloth, sighing. Still he continued to glance back at the house nervously. “You have no family, Hazel? No one living?”

“No one.”

“Only just your son?”

“Only just my son.”

“Are you and Chet secretly married, dear?”

“No.”

“But why? Why aren’t you married?”

Hazel smiled evasively. No, no! She would not say.