Джойс Оутс - Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars

It was true, Thom disapproved of Virgil’s lifestyle. (Like Whitey, he had no idea what Virgil’s lifestyle might be; like Whitey, he did not wish to know.) However, he owed it to their parents to try to get along with Virgil.

Still, it maddened him to see Virgil’s wispy beard, scruffy dirty-blond hair tied back in a ponytail with a length of twine. A slight stoop of Virgil’s shoulders though he was only thirty-one. Slovenly embroidered shirt, frayed and paint-stained overalls, open-toed sandals. (And Virgil’s toes were knobby and unsightly.) What roused Thom to particular indignation was that look in Virgil’s warm blue eyes of infinite compassion, understanding, sympathy—a swimmingness of feeling.

Looking in those eyes, you were in danger of drowning.

Sometimes, Thom said to Beverly, with whom he shared family pre-occupations, Virgil makes me want to punch him in the mouth. Except he’d just forgive me, and then I’d want to kill him.

Beverly had laughed, though she’d been shocked. She liked to hear such terrible things from her revered elder brother but she would not have wished to share her own feelings about Virgil for she knew that such feelings sprang from what was meanest in her, and furthest from the family love and loyalty their parents had tried to instill in them.

But Beverly had laughed, feeling as if Thom had tickled her.

Who’s he think he is, the Dalai Lama?—Beverly had said wittily.

At last, footsteps on the stairs. But it was only one sister—Beverly.

Disappointing, Beverly was going home. Lorene and Sophia had gone to bed upstairs in their old rooms.

No, Beverly didn’t want a drink. Thanks but no.

Thom saw, his sister was looking disheveled, fattish. Not much like the radiant high school girl in the snapshots. And shiny-eyed, teary. (Had she been crying? Christ!) Refused a bottle from the refrigerator but she did take a swig from Thom’s and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand as a man might have done.

“We put Mom to bed, finally. She wouldn’t remove all her clothes, she says she’s afraid of the phone ringing and we’ll have to drive to the hospital and she wants to be prepared. It’s so strange—she speaks so calmly . It’s like Dad is instructing her—you know, how Dad is always telling her what to do. And how weird it is, to be in that bedroom, and know that Dad isn’t there. We stayed with her a while until it seemed that she was asleep (unless she was just pretending, to get rid of us) and we crept out and shut the door and I’m going home now, I am absolutely wrung dry.”

“Why don’t you stay here, too? It’s late to drive home.”

“No, I just called Steve. They’re waiting for me. I need to get home. I’ll stay tomorrow night if—if Dad is still in danger…”

Beverly was looking frightened, haggard. Still in danger had scared her.

Abruptly Thom unwound his long legs from his chair, rose and hugged Beverly with a muffled sob. Beverly grabbed him tight.

“Hey, c’mon. Dad will be just fine. You know Whitey McClaren—he’ll outlive us all.”

Looking on Virgil stood uncertainly a few feet away as if waiting for Beverly to detach herself from Thom and next hug him .

But Beverly only just said, to both brothers, at the door—“Good night!”

“YOU ARE ONLY AS HAPPYas your least happy child.”

(Someone had said this. Or had she heard it on TV.)

(Was it a silly platitude? Was it true? Painfully true?)

Whitey didn’t think of it that way. Not Whitey!

“It’s more like we give them life, we set them free, like little boats on a river. We prepare them for the journey but once they’re twenty-one, let’s say, it’s up to them to make the journey by themselves. And our children are long past twenty-one.”

Whitey spoke so sensibly, she knew he must be correct.

Yet, she did not agree. She had to object.

Not an hour passed but that Jessalyn didn’t think of each of her children. It did not matter that they were “grown up”—“adults.” In some ways this made them more vulnerable. As they’d spun out in ever larger concentric circles from her.

Like bases on a baseball field. First base: Thom. Second base: Beverly. Third base: Lorene.

(In her imagination, still children. But Thom lanky-long-legged, a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead so you couldn’t see his eyes.)

But there the metaphor broke down. For there was Virgil, and there was Sophia. The babies! Their mother had spent fewer years thinking about them for the simple reason that they’d been in her life for fewer years. It was eerie how, in a dream, though there were children, there were not enough children for she’d forgotten one or two, or, worse yet, they had not been born.

This was an unspeakable horror to her. As it was senseless, ridiculous.

How Whitey would laugh at her, if he knew! How the children would laugh.

And Virgil would quote some ancient Greek curmudgeon-philosopher about how it is better not to have been born at all—ridiculous!

“Maybe a mother feels differently. I do feel that they are my responsibility and always will be, if I am their mother.”

“Well, darling—that’s silly. That’s you .”

Whitey kissed her lips, that felt slightly cold. His own lips always felt (to him) slightly over-warm.

Adding: “I hope you don’t think that I am your responsibility, too.”

Jessalyn drew away from her husband, just slightly stung.

“Of course! Of course I feel that you are my responsibility, darling. ‘In sickness and in health.’ Any wife would feel that way about her husband.”

“Not any wife, dear. But you’re very sweet to say so.”

They were sitting close together, hands clasped together.

Jessalyn thought, with a kind of wild elation— But I will have to outlive him, to care for him. I cannot ever leave him even to die.

AND NOW.In the bed, alone. Her side of the bed.

How strange it is, in this bed, alone: without Whitey beside her.

Exhausted and dazed, seemingly wide-awake, and her eyes wide-open (though in fact her eyes are closed) sinking into a dark perilous place—fearful of what she will see there.

Nothing. There is—nothing.

Gusts of wind, against the darkened windows. Skeins of rain slapping against the glass and a sound of wind chimes almost inaudible, she strains to hear, faint and fading, silvery, the most frail beauty. She strains to hear.

Of the McClaren family it was only Thom who knew.

Without being certain what it was, he knew.

Mistaken identity. All charges dropped.

It was all very upsetting. Confusing. His father had evidently been “arrested”—or rather, his father had been “taken into police custody”—for having allegedly “interfered” with a police arrest at the side of the Hennicott Expressway.

But then, his father had “collapsed”—not inside the Toyota Highlander but at the side of the Expressway—and police officers had called 911.

Somehow, there had been a “mistake” in “identifying”—someone. (Whitey McClaren?) A mistake by— whom ?

Thom was being assured, all charges had been dropped.

In the light of a “further investigation”—“substantiating by ‘witnesses’”—all charges had been dropped.

All this, or as much of this as he could absorb, Thom was informed on his cell phone, in a corridor outside his father’s room in the Intensive Care Unit at Hammond General Hospital. Cell phone reception inside the hospital was poor, the voice at the other end was continually breaking up. Hello? Hello? —Thom cried in exasperation.