Джойс Оутс: Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars

The bulletin board was festooned with numerous pictures of Whitey. Family snapshots, public photos. Here was Daddy presiding over a birthday cake blazing with candles, children tucked about him, and here was dignified John Earle McClaren, mayor of Hammond, in black tie, commemorating an anniversary of the opening of the Erie Barge Canal locks at Hammond, on a barge with local and state politicians.

Playful Whitey, silly Daddy, stiff-backed John Earle McClaren shaking hands with Governor Mario Cuomo of New York State on a stage banked with giant gladioli like sinister upright flower-swords.

But where was Jessalyn, among this profusion of snapshots and photos?

Beverly was dismayed: there appeared to be no pictures of Jessalyn except in group shots in which she was a small, peripheral figure. Beverly holding a baby, Thom with a toddler straddling his shoulders, Jessalyn looking on with a radiant-grandmother smile.

No pictures of Jessalyn alone. And no pictures of Jessalyn at all that were less than twenty years old.

“As if Mom doesn’t exist.”

So long Jessalyn had been the perfect wife and mother, invisible. So happily living for others, she scarcely lives at all.

Her husband adored her of course. When they were young the children had been embarrassed seeing Daddy kiss Mommy’s hand, hug Mommy and burrow his face against her neck in a kind of rough play that offended them to have to witness. How mortified they were, seeing their parents greet each other with something like tenderness!—it did not seem right, in persons so old.

Yet, Whitey took Jessalyn utterly for granted as they all did. He didn’t know it, and Jessalyn didn’t know it. But it was so.

They’d tried to convince their mother to spend money on herself, not just presents for other people.

But, but—what would she get for herself? Jessalyn had stammered.

Clothes, a new car.

She had more clothes than she could wear in a lifetime, Jessalyn protested. She had fur coats. She had a new car.

“Don’t be silly, Mom. Your car is not new .”

“Your father oversees my cars, as you know. I need a car only to drive a few miles, and back. It isn’t as if I am a world traveler .”

World traveler —they’d laughed. Jessalyn was very funny at times.

“And why do I need new clothes? I have such beautiful clothes. I have a mink coat your father insisted upon giving me that I never wear. I have ridiculously expensive jewelry—to wear in Hammond! And shoes—far too many shoes! But I am just me .”

Not that they were laughing at her. Their laughter was tender, protective.

It was so, Whitey was the one to oversee household expenditures. He’d insisted upon a lavish kitchen renovation a few years ago, which Jessalyn had resisted; he was the one who became obsessed with granite counters, Spanish tile floor, recessed lighting, state-of-the-art stainless steel stove, refrigerator, sink. Beautiful as something in a glossy magazine, and very expensive.

“Just for us? Me ? I’m not even a serious cook…” Jessalyn had stammered with embarrassment.

Whitey was the one who oversaw the exterior of the house—the condition of the roof and chimneys and driveway, snow removal, landscaping, care of shrubs and tall aging trees. Jessalyn’s idea of reckless spending was buying flowering plants for her garden, wind chimes for the deck, the “very best” wild-bird seed, the kind that contained dark sunflower seeds amid the more common corn kernels, to attract fancier birds like cardinals.

Yet Whitey often said, with an air of protest— It’s not like we’re rich. We are not.

It had become a joke within the family, and within the McClarens’ circle of friends.

We’re not rich! Jesus.

With an expression like Groucho Marx’s. Not rich! Not us.

In fact, how rich were the McClarens? Their neighbors assumed that the McClarens had as much money as anyone else on Old Farm Road. Within the Hammond business community, it was understood that McClaren, Inc. was “profitable.” But this was a sensitive subject the children never wished to discuss as, growing up, they would not have wished to discuss their parents’ sex lives.

Beverly winced, considering. No!

Still, it was known that, as a young man, Whitey McClaren had been given the responsibility of the McClaren family business to run, a commercial press in (evident) decline; within a decade Whitey had managed to double, treble, quadruple the company’s size and profits by dropping old-time, small-scale printing jobs (menus, calendars, flyers for local businesses, material for the Hammond Board of Education) and specializing in glossy brochures for professional schools, businesses, pharmaceutical companies. Unskilled in what he called “high tech”—(anything to do with computers)—Whitey had cannily hired a young staff skilled in computers and digital publishing. He’d begun a line of school textbooks and YA books with a Christian slant, which had proved unexpectedly successful.

Thom, the eldest, had been (tacitly) selected by their father to work with him at the press even before he’d graduated from Colgate with a degree in business administration; it was Thom who directed Searchlight Books, with headquarters in Rochester.

How is the business doing, Thom? —Lorene might inquire through clenched teeth; and Thom would reply with a disingenuous smile— Ask Dad.

Yet you could not, really. You could not ask Dad .

Whitey had invested in real estate, and he was a co-investor in several shopping malls, that had prospered as the downtowns of old, industrial cities (Buffalo, Port Oriskany) had faded. Though on principle he didn’t “believe” in most pills and drugs which (he was sure) were no better than placebos, he’d purchased stock in the pharmaceutical companies for which he published his lavish brochures.

While other investors had lost money in the Wall Street debacles of recent years, Whitey McClaren had prospered.

He hadn’t boasted, however. Whitey never spoke of money at all.

None of the McClaren children wanted to think about their parents’ wills. Or even if they had wills.

“Hello? Steve…”

After several tries Beverly had managed to get through to her husband at the Bank of Chautauqua. Before Steve could interrupt she told him excitedly that she was feeling desperate, she was at her parents’ house and no one seemed to be here—she had no idea where anyone was and before this Virgil had bicycled to their house but had gone away again before Beverly could find out what was wrong…

“It isn’t a great time to talk, Bev. I’m headed for a crucial meeting…”

“But, wait—this is crucial too. I think that something must have happened… I don’t know where anyone is.”

“Call me back in a few hours, OK? Or—I’ll call you.” Steve was a senior loan officer at the Bank of Chautauqua who took his work very seriously, or gave that impression to his family.

“No, wait—I told you, I don’t know where anyone is.”

“Probably nothing. They’ll explain. See you tonight.”

How like Steve to respond to an anxious call from his wife with all the nuance of a boys’ sports coach. You blink back tears, the man hands you a stick of gum.

Oh, she hated him! She could not depend upon him.

So often it was like this. Steve brushed her away as you’d brush away an annoying gnat. Not angry with her, nor even irritated, just—it’s a gnat.

Always Beverly was suggesting to Lorene how wonderful it was to be married . To have a family. She could not bear her sneering younger sister to know how Steve disrespected her, so often.

Married seventeen years. Sometimes she wondered if that was a few years too long.