Beautiful Days Read online

  Dedication

  to Greg Johnson

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  I Fleuve Bleu

  Big Burnt

  Owl Eyes

  Except You Bless Me

  The Quiet Car

  The Bereaved

  II Les beaux jours

  Fractal

  Undocumented Alien

  Donald Barthelme Saved from Oblivion

  The Memorial Field at Hazard, Minnesota

  About the Author

  Also by Joyce Carol Oates

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Acknowledgments

  “Fleuve Bleu” originally appeared in Kenyon Review.

  “Big Burnt” originally appeared in Conjunctions.

  “Owl Eyes” originally appeared in Yale Review.

  “The Bereaved” originally appeared in Yale Review.

  “Except You Bless Me” originally appeared in Salmagundi.

  “The Quiet Car” originally appeared in Harper’s.

  “Les beaux jours” originally appeared in Alive in Shape and Color: 17 Stories Inspired by 17 Different Artists.

  “Fractal” originally appeared in Conjunctions.

  “Undocumented Alien” originally appeared in Conjunctions, and has been anthologized in Pushcart Prize: The Best of the Small Presses 2017.

  “Donald Barthelme Saved from Oblivion” originally appeared in American Short Fiction.

  “The Memorial Field at Hazard, Minnesota” originally appeared in Yale Review.

  Occasional lines from the work of Donald Barthelme occur in the story “Donald Barthelme Saved from Oblivion.”

  I

  Fleuve Bleu

  Mid-afternoon, late autumn, bars of spangled light on the river, he was crossing the bridge on the pedestrian walkway fluttering with flags when he’d first seen her, not knowing it was her. And the whimsical thought came to him, as such thoughts had often come to him when he’d been younger, and had lived alone and walked a good deal by himself in urban places—I will marry her. That one.

  Except, of course, he was married now. He was long married, by now. The brash young man who’d walked for hours in cities, tireless, curious, thrilled to be alone, sometimes taking photographs but often to no purpose other than to walk on his quick, restless legs, had long departed.

  SHE HAD GLANCED AROUND in that instant, as if he’d reached out to touch her. A leap of recognition between them like a blade of light on water.

  Almost, he’d lifted his hand in greeting. But he didn’t know the young woman and he was sure she didn’t know him.

  Afterward he would claim that their eyes had met, that first time, and she would say laughingly—I don’t think so. I think I would remember, if that were so.

  HE WAS DRAWN TO THE RIVER. Swift-flowing ravenous waters rushing close beside buildings in this old riverside mill town.

  Le Fleuve Bleu it had been, once. At the time of the French settlement in the 1730s. Now, just Blue River.

  Yet strangely, by some logic a local historian might have explained, the small riverside city itself was still called Fleuve Bleu—pronounced in the flat nasal way of upstate New York, “fluuv blue.”

  On the farther side of the Blue River was Fort Winston, Ontario.

  From the ceiling-high window of his office in the old brick Rutherford Building on River Street where often he sat dreaming he could see massed trees on the Canadian shore less than a mile away, the bulky silhouette of the single-span bridge that linked Fleuve Bleu and Fort Cornwell, a stretch of waterfront—massive rusted oil drums, warehouses, trucking yards, docks. Barges on the river moving with surprising swiftness in the churning water like rhinos.

  When he’d first come to work in this (family-owned) law firm he’d brought a camera with him every day. He’d spend his lunch hour roaming the waterfront, taking photographs. He’d climb out onto the fire escape, taking photographs. Gradually in recent years he’d ceased bringing a camera to work though something ached in him, a yearning, an emptiness, when he saw something, more often someone he’d have liked to photograph—a distinctive face, a memorable gaze.

  As he thought it—A gaze to pierce the heart.

  It had come to seem an indulgence, his expensive cameras—(about which his dear kind wife never spoke, never reproachfully)—and taking so much time, such exactitude, caring so much about images few people would ever see. Of course his family and friends “admired” his photography—how could they not? He was one of theirs.

  More recently since his fortieth birthday to resist the camera, to resist making costly prints of his work—this seemed to him a kind of virtue.

  A Tolstoyan virtue, of negativity. Not wasting money on photography. Not approaching the young woman on the bridge with whom, in that first, fatal instant, he was smitten.

  FEARLESS SHE’D APPEARED TO HIM, at the bridge railing. Leaning just a little too far over the railing, as a reckless child might do.

  She was staring down at the water rushing twelve feet below the walkway. Le fleuve bleu and so in fact the water appeared blue, dark cobalt-blue, heaving and bucking and throwing up spray, chill droplets tossed by the wind so that pedestrians squealed with surprised laughter—Is it raining? No—not rain . . .

  It was a surprisingly warm November midday. A day to bask in sunshine.

  First he’d seen her, her back was to the walkway. A white skirt of some thin material like muslin billowed about her legs that were slender yet hard with muscle. Crimped hair, dark-red like sumac.

  Then, she looked around. Saw him.

  Blood-red mouth, startling.

  He felt a tinge of pleasure—Do I know her? Is she smiling—at me?

  She was with companions—was she? Not alone.

  The walkway above the river was crowded at midday. Festooned with cheery little flags alternating red-white-and-blue (U.S.) and red-and-white (Canada).

  Thinking she might be Canadian. With friends, visiting for the day.

  Yet: if she wasn’t Canadian, not a stranger, she could turn out to be the young sister of one of his high school classmates in which case (he warned himself) it wasn’t a great idea to approach her on the pedestrian bridge. Even a smile was risky.

  And so, he’d continued past her. He had not hesitated for a moment. After that initial moment.

  The thin white-muslin skirt lifted in the wind, almost touching his legs, he passed that close.

  A PURELY WHIMSICAL THOUGHT of the kind that bombarded his brain through much of his waking life. Thoughts like giddy gnats he made no effort to curtail, knowing them harmless.

  Yes. That one.

  THE SECOND TIME, things happened swiftly.

  Crossing Center Street in a sudden downpour, waiting for a red light to change, impracticably dressed for such weather in high-heeled shoes. She was furious with herself. Could’ve whipped herself raw. Trying not to fucking cry. Overcome with self-disgust, dismay. For this was not right—she was twenty-eight years old. Her love for her children waxed and waned, was that normal? She didn’t think so. She commuted to Fleuve Bleu to get away from them. She didn’t love the father of the children. She was a textbook editor’s assistant. She was God damn smarter than her boss—even he knew that. Smarter than so many people, but what had it got her?

  Oh God. Forgive me, I am hopeless.

  A new-model station wagon pulled up beside her as she stood at the curb in pelting rain, the driver’s window lowered—“Hey. Get in. Wherever you’re going, I’ll take you.”

  THEY VOWED: THEY WOULD BE honest with each other.

  Brutally, totally. No holding back!

&nb
sp; “D’you think it’s even possible?”—he asked.

  “Yes. I think it is.”

  She told him it would be the inside-out of the rest of her life, her relationship with him. She hoped it would be the inside-out of his life, too.

  She meant, what they had together was a counter-world. That other world, the “real” world—that did not apply, between the two of them.

  He wasn’t sure that such exclusion was possible, or even ideal.

  He said, “Yes.”

  “Because I’m always lying. In that other life. In my ‘real’ life. I tell people—I tell myself—‘I live for my children. I adore my children.’” She spoke avidly, ardently. The blood-red mouth had been smeared in their eager lovemaking. She looked young now, uncertain. He was fascinated by her, the way she had of blundering forward, speaking as she was thinking, head-on, reckless, not censoring her thoughts to impress him, the man, or to shield him. There was no one in his life—no one else in his life—who plunged forward in such a way, heedlessly.

  “Of course I love them—I am their mother. But I’m so much more than their fucking mother. When they behave badly, and it goes on, and on, and I can see that they don’t love me much—I mean, children need you, it’s need they feel for you, not love—I feel as if my heart is breaking, I think Jesus! What a fool you were, to get into this. And I mean it! The whole mother-thing, the woman-thing, the woman-body-thing—like quicksand. It’s just that I would never tell anyone else, certainly not the father of the children. Not my mother, not his mother. Jesus!”

  She laughed, too hard. A hectic flush had come into her face. He liked it that she was so brash with him, in these early days of intimacy. It was his experience that women took pains to seem “feminine”—but not this one.

  Not beautiful but her frankness was a kind of beauty. And she wasn’t as young as she’d first appeared to him—for which he was grateful.

  When he was away from her, he found himself thinking of her obsessively. And in her presence that was hot, humid, close-up and magnified, he felt that he could almost not breathe.

  Like a bold exuberant child pushing gifts at him he didn’t know if he wanted—didn’t know if he should accept—she was telling him secrets he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. How she’d lain in bed exhausted as a young mother, at the age of twenty-three—hearing her baby cry in the next room, fretting, wailing, and she’d pretended not to hear. Her heart had shrunk into a hard little root, hearing the baby cry. She’d thought—It will cease, finally. At some point.

  Milk had leaked from her nipples. The swoon of motherhood had been upon her, unspeakable pleasure in the baby’s tough little gums sucking at her, and soon then she’d been unable to resist. Heaved herself from her bed. She’d never been able to let either of her children really cry, as abandoned children might cry.

  He was quiet, listening. A faint roaring in his ears of warning.

  They lay on the bed, a rough-textured coverlet twisted beneath them. Overhead, across the faintly cracked ceiling, a lattice-pattern of light like something undersea.

  It was a room he’d acquired specifically for this purpose. Not a room with which he was personally associated but a room in a rental property owned by Rutherford, Inc. for which he was an officer.

  “And how do you feel? Do you ‘adore’ your children, also?”

  He didn’t like her intonation—adore. He knew, she was being ironic, self-protective. But he didn’t like irony unless it was his own.

  Irony the double-edged sword. Take care wielding it.

  Heard himself say, thoughtfully—“I love my kids. Of course. But we don’t need to talk about them now, do we? This is our special time together.”

  He spoke easily, guilelessly. Each word he uttered was a true word, it was the sum of his words that was problematic.

  She said, “I thought we wouldn’t lie to each other. I thought that was the point.”

  “Why do you think I’m lying to you? I’m not.”

  “There are lies of omission. Some of the worst.”

  “Darling, I won’t lie to you. I’m not lying when I say that I’m deeply in love with you, but I can’t take my feeling for you back into my other life. It would be devastating.”

  “But do you really love that other life?”—she spoke wistfully.

  He thought—I will have to lie to her. She expects it.

  “Yes, I love my ‘other life.’ But it’s this life with you, these times with you, that are special to me, that give me strength to endure the other life.”

  On her belly he traced an invisible trail. Her skin shivered beneath his fingertips. The flesh was a young flesh—taut, tight. He understood that he should not be thinking of his wife’s body, his wife’s far slacker, looser skin—he should not, and he did not. His fingers could feel what his eyes couldn’t see—the faintest of birthmarks. In shape something like a leaf. Delicate, breakable.

  Reading her like Braille, she thought. As no one had read her before.

  SHE SNATCHED UP HIS FINGERS, kissed the knuckles. Had to let the man know, she wasn’t a passive female. She didn’t just lie there.

  A GAZE TO PIERCE THE HEART.

  He’d ceased looking. Ceased expecting to see anything that leapt to his eye. Long restless walks, most days—didn’t hope to see anything exceptional.

  Giving up the camera, you gave up the possibility of certain kinds of seeing.

  More often on his walks he saw people whom he knew, or half-knew. People with whom he’d gone to school. Ex-teachers. Aging friends of his aging parents. Faces familiar as faces glimpsed in dreams. On the street, in parkland along the river, in restaurants and cafés he patronized as in the foyer of his office building at 55 River Street that surprised him and made him smile when he glanced up to see Gothic engraved letters in the granite portico—his family name, a very old name in Fleuve Bleu, detached from him and impersonal: RUTHERFORD.

  “Really? That’s your name?”

  She’d laughed. Her teeth were not perfect teeth but her smile was a perfect teasing smile.

  “It’s like ‘Rockefeller’—‘Carnegie.’ I mean, around here. You don’t expect to meet anybody actually named ‘Rutherford’—the feeling is, they must’ve all died.”

  He’d laughed. It was like being tickled with hard, unsentimental fingers. She wanted him to know she wasn’t impressed, not much.

  Sure, she was impressed. Her chic-vintage clothes from secondhand shops, faux-leather shoulder bag, faux-leather shoes, the less-than-perfect teeth you might call charmingly crooked, and something defensive in her way of speaking marked her—(Christ, he didn’t want to think in such terms!)—as of a class distinctly below his own.

  His notion that she might be Canadian had been totally groundless. In fact, she’d been born in the same hospital in which, twelve years earlier, he’d been born, in Fleuve Bleu. And she lived now, with her husband and two young children, in Rensselaer Falls seven miles east of Fleuve Bleu.

  It wasn’t adultery, he told himself. There was no encroachment upon his other, essential life. He would never be jealous of the (faceless) husband. He would never meet the (faceless) children.

  And what was more crucial, she would never meet his wife, his children. That was understood.

  HE BEGAN BRINGING HIS CAMERA. Not the old camera but the new, expensive digital Nikon.

  But she said No. Not that.

  He’d been surprised. Hurt and disappointed. But thinking—She doesn’t trust me. Maybe that’s a good thing.

  HE WAS FORTY YEARS OLD. He was married, he was the father of two adolescent children. And he was happily married, his wife was a lovely, kind, intelligent and gentle person whom he would never wish to hurt. His life moved past in surges, like warm water through his fingers. It was the balm of domestic life—a rhythm of days, routines. He remembered when the children had been young and had clamored at his legs, demanded to be lifted in his arms. Daddy!—their cries had torn at his heart, the ritual cries of children. Whe
n he’d been with them, he’d sometimes found himself staring at them as if they were strangers. It was fascinating to watch his wife with the children, they’d brought out a particular patience and kindliness in her that caused him to love her deeply. He thought They have made of us better people than we were meant to be.

  EVEN IN THE COUNTER-WORLD, there were anniversaries.

  Day of the week they’d first seen each other on the pedestrian walkway: Tuesday. (At least, he’d seen her.)

  Day of the week he’d sighted her on Center Street, in the rain, absolutely by chance, pulled boldly up to the curb and offered her a ride: Friday.

  Day of the week they’d first made love: Friday.

  This Tuesday and this Friday: six days apart.

  At first, anniversaries were weeks. Then, months.

  Sometimes they met publicly, as if by chance. Fleuve Bleu was such a small town, the downtown area scarcely more than a few blocks, the stately old Rutherford Building a five-minute walk from Fowler’s Publishing, Inc. She’d laughed seeing him looking eagerly—anxiously?—for her.

  “Hi!”

  “H’lo!”

  Crazy smiles. You feel your face rearranging itself in such smiles.

  “Are you—?”

  “Are you—?”

  Taking care not to meet too often in the same places. Very shrewd, their caution.

  Mostly, they met in the rental flat. He could walk there easily, and she could walk there easily, the apartment building was on a side street, not a street much frequented by pedestrians, always he would arrive first, as planned. He liked it that the place had no history, certainly no personal history. He wasn’t even sure that she knew he owned it, or was one of the owners. The room, the bed, their bed—it was of that inside-out world, sequestered and secret.

  It was weeks before he’d realized she didn’t have a key, he had not given her a key, and she’d never requested one. For always, he was the first to arrive at the flat and would be awaiting her; sometimes she stood outside the door listening to him inside talking on his cell phone—words indistinct but tone clear, invariably her lover was in a good mood, laughing, at ease.