Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories Read online

  DEDICATION

  FOR MARIANA COOK & HANS KRAUS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The stories in this volume have appeared, often in slightly different forms, in the following venues:

  “Sex with Camel” in The American Reader

  “Mastiff” in The New Yorker

  “Distance” in Ploughshares

  “A Book of Martyrs” in Virginia Quarterly Review

  “‘Stephanos Is Dead’” in Yale Review

  “The Hunter” in Boulevard

  “The Disappearing” in American Short Fiction

  “Things Passed on the Way to Oblivion” in Salmagundi

  “Forked River Roadside Shrine, South Jersey” in Vice

  “The Jesters” in Virginia Quarterly Review

  “Betrayal” in Conjunctions

  “Lovely, Dark, Deep” in Harper’s

  “Patricide” in EccoSolo (ebook)

  “Mastiff” is reprinted in The Best American Short Stories 2014

  To all these editors and publications, heartfelt thanks and gratitude are due.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  I

  Sex with Camel

  Mastiff

  Distance

  A Book of Martyrs

  “Stephanos Is Dead”

  II

  The Hunter

  The Disappearing

  Things Passed on the Way to Oblivion

  III

  Forked River Roadside Shrine, South Jersey

  The Jesters

  Betrayal

  Lovely, Dark, Deep

  IV

  Patricide

  About the Author

  Also by Joyce Carol Oates

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  SEX WITH CAMEL

  LOTS OF THINGS ARE OVERRATED. LIKE SUICIDE.”

  The boy laughed at his own cleverness. The grandmother, who was driving in midmorning traffic, seemed distracted.

  More emphatically the boy said, “There’s, like, two competing suicide hotlines for ‘teens’ in just Boondock County, USA.”

  “Boondock County—where’s that?”

  “Are you kidding, Grams? Here.”

  “Oh, here. I see—here.”

  The grandmother smiled but didn’t laugh. Not that the boy had made a witty remark, but it wasn’t like her not to laugh at the boy’s remarks, however unwitty.

  “At school we get e-mail announcements all the time. If you’re lonely and troubled and need someone to talk to. Crisis Counselors are waiting for your call which will be held in the strictest confidence. There’s a new one—Do you feel safe in your home?” The boy laughed.

  “Well, do you?”

  “Are you kidding, Grams? Statistics say—ninety percent of fatal accidents are in the home.”

  They laughed together. This was good.

  He liked entertaining—well, anyone. He’d been a clever bright boy almost since he’d learned to talk. Though in cuteness, he’d probably peaked at about age eleven.

  Next birthday, he’d be seventeen.

  The grandmother who was elegantly dressed as always when she left the house—smart white-silk turban, white cashmere sweater-coat, sharp-creased pale blue linen trousers, good shoes—was driving to the new hospital. The boy had wanted to drive of course but the grandmother had insisted, for she was nearing an age—(she was not yet there, but she believed she was nearing there)—where such basic skills as driving a vehicle might begin to atrophy, if she didn’t practice them daily.

  Superannuated. The grandmother didn’t want to be that, she’d said. The boy had been impressed with the word which he’d appropriated as one of his own.

  As a young boy, he’d collected words. Zygote, parallax, exsanguination were examples. Now, superannuated.

  This morning’s drive was something of an adventure—the new hospital was, according to the Google map which the boy had printed out, 6.7 miles farther from their house than the old hospital.

  They’d worn out the old hospital. It was time for the new hospital which had just opened the previous week, on the far side of a rushing six-lane state highway.

  “Suicide is, like, some kind of dumb hobby. Ninety percent of suicides are mistakes—the person hadn’t actually intended to kill himself.”

  “And why are we talking about this?” The grandmother, who’d been an administrator in a small liberal arts college in a former lifetime, spoke with an air of bemused disbelief. The grandmother cast a sidelong glance at the boy that would have been, if the boy had acknowledged it, withering.

  The boy shrugged. He’d only meant to be entertaining, nothing he said had the slightest significance or depth.

  “Who brought it up?” the boy asked. “Not me.”

  “Well, not me.”

  In fact as the grandmother drove the boy had been skimming e-mails and text messages on his smartphone. It was one of the slew of mostly unwanted e-mails from his school that provided a link to the crisis hotline, he’d deleted without a second thought.

  “Tell me something funny. I mean, funny.”

  “There’s this kid accompanying his grams for something to do on this perfect autumn day when he could be hiking in Peace River Canyon with his friends or alone with his Nike D200.”

  “Very funny.”

  “‘Dyslexic guy walks into a bra.’”

  “A what?”

  “A bra.”

  The grandmother laughed. “That is funny.”

  “‘You’re so ugly, in the sandbox the cat tried to bury you.’”

  “No. That’s not funny.”

  “C’mon, Grams—there’s, like, a million ‘You’re so ugly’ jokes. That’s one of the least nasty.”

  “I don’t like jokes that turn upon people being ugly, or stupid, or”—the grandmother’s voice shifted just perceptibly, so the boy knew she meant to be funny—“Polish.”

  The boy wanted to point out to the grandmother that jokes are based upon insults mostly. Where’s she been all her life? The jokes he hears from his friends and tells are pretty crude, taken from the Internet or cable TV.

  “‘There’s this guy riding through the desert on a camel. He’d been alone for days so he felt the need for sex. No women anywhere in sight so the guy turns to his camel who has become wary of him, like the camel had had some kind of experience like this before. So the guy tries to position himself to have sex with the camel but the camel runs away. The guy runs to catch up with the camel and the camel lets him on, but just to ride. But soon the guy feels a need for sex again so he tries the same thing again—but the camel runs away. Finally after crossing the desert the guy comes to a road, and on the road is a broken-down car with two gorgeous blond women in it. The guy asks the women if they need help and they tell him if he fixes their car, they’ll do anything he wants. The guy works on the car and gets the motor going and the women thank him saying, ‘Now what can we do for you?’ and the guy says, ‘Could you hold my camel?’”

  The grandmother seemed to be contemplating this. But the grandmother did laugh, finally.

  “OK, that’s funny. Only just not very.”

  “There’s dirtier jokes that are funnier, Grams. But I’d guess you don’t want to hear them.”

  There was an edge to the boy’s voice. The grandmother declined to reply.

  The grandmother continued to drive, now engulfed in a swirl of traffic at a rotary. The boy knew to remain silent as the grandmother navigated the exit—not the first, not the second, but the third exit.

  The boy felt really old sometimes. But that was his secret.

  When the grandmother had exited the
roundabout properly and was driving at a normal speed again the grandmother said, “At least five people have asked me, over the phone, who is coming with me to the hospital and who will be driving me home. What they don’t want is someone stepping out of their unit after waking from a ‘procedure,’ fainting and falling down. Worse, falling down some stairs.”

  “What they don’t want,” the boy said, “is a lawsuit.”

  The grandmother chewed at her lower lip, thoughtfully.

  “I guess you must be right. I never thought of it that way. I’d thought they gave a damn about me.”

  “They can give a damn about you, Grams, and still not want to be sued.”

  “CAN YOU READ the directions to me? Please.”

  “I did. I have been. Jesus!”

  The grandmother was driving slowly along a newly paved road in the direction of a high-rise building that looked to be made of dull-green shimmering glass, in several flaring wings. Beyond this building were smaller and flatter buildings. All were surrounded by parking lots. The boy was trying to match up the Google map with the actual landscape and was having difficulty.

  The “new hospital” was a congeries of sleek buildings constructed at the edge of town in a lunar-landscape of parking lots and mostly bulldozed soil. Yet, there were areas planted in fragile new grass, and sprinklers rising and falling in the sunshine.

  Though everything was new, the parking lots closest to the hospital were near-filled. And these lots were vast and daunting. Even the boy was feeling daunted.

  There was a drop-off place for patients and visitors near the front entrance of the high-rise green-shimmering building and the boy and the grandmother were trying to determine how they could spare the grandmother walking what looked like a mile from the parking lot. Finally the boy said, “Just get out, Grandma. I’ll park the damn car. There’s not gonna be New Jersey traffic cops on private property, asking to see my license.”

  It was a measure of the grandmother’s mounting desperation that she agreed to this. The boy slid into the driver’s seat when she got out of the car, and drove into Lot B.

  By the time the grandmother had made her way into the fiercely air-conditioned foyer of the sparkling new building, and was glancing about looking for assistance, the boy had parked the Acura and had run back to join her.

  The boy was a damned good runner. At times like these especially.

  In school sports, the boy was too lazy, or dreamy, or distracted. Couldn’t take seriously what the other guys took seriously. All that crap was like living your life with your face pressed up close against a mirror, you couldn’t see your own face let alone anything surrounding it. Kid stuff didn’t engage him, now he wasn’t a kid.

  Everything was shining-new in the new hospital. Glancing up you expected to see welcome balloons bouncing against the ceiling several floors above.

  “Hel-lo! Can I be of assistance?”

  A smiling young woman in clothes color-coordinated with the soft pinks, greens, blues of the foyer appeared at their elbow. The grandmother said yes thank you. As if she hadn’t memorized the words, the grandmother frowned at a form she was holding saying carefully, “It’s the Ambulatory Surgery Unit we’re looking for.”

  The appointment was for 9:30 A.M. It was 9:22 A.M. now.

  The smiling young woman informed them that they were in the wrong building—the hospital. The Ambulatory Surgery Unit was in the Medical Arts Pavilion at the far side of the hospital. “You should have parked in the east lot and entered by that entrance.”

  “How’d we know that? ‘East lot.’” The boy was feeling belligerent.

  “If you’ve come for an appointment, you should have been given directions and a map to the Medical Arts Pavilion.”

  “‘Pavilion’? What’s that—like, a carnival or something? A band plays on a ‘pavilion’?”

  The smiling young woman looked perplexed. “‘Pavilion’—it’s just what it’s called. Where Medical Arts is.”

  Quickly the grandmother intervened. “The Medical Arts Pavilion is in—this direction? Through here?”

  The smiling young woman said yes. She was pointing into the interior of the hospital—you could see a bank of elevators, a long wide gleaming corridor, an atrium with potted trees, an “outdoor” café. Workmen were noisily installing something involving electrical wires beyond a sign that smartly read PARDON OUR PROGRESS!

  The boy, whose blood had begun beating hard since he’d run in a fast sprint from Lot B, said to the smiling woman, “How’d anybody know that? They told us to come to the hospital.”

  Strictly speaking, this was probably not true. When the grandmother had spoken of her appointment at “the new hospital” she’d spoken in a general and therefore careless way, which the boy had taken literally, and now was reluctant to surrender, the way a loyal dog will not surrender something his master has tossed for him to fetch, to the wrong person.

  “If you’ve come for a medical procedure, you should have been given information, a sheet of paper with a map,” the young woman said evenly. She was still smiling but her smile had become strained. “But there’s no problem, I’m here to guide you.”

  The boy was fuming. Hard to say why. Maybe seeing the grandmother through the young woman’s practiced eyes, a woman in her late sixties too elegantly dressed for the circumstances, determined to play the role of composed, calm.

  “Just tell us which direction, we can find our own way,” the boy said, but the grandmother said, “Thanks! That would be really kind of you.”

  Together they walked into the interior of the high-rise building, the smiling young woman in the lead.

  The boy was smoldering and grinding his back molars.

  The boy nudged the grandmother who was clutching her overpriced oversized handbag in a way that annoyed him.

  “The grandma routine gets old, fast.”

  “The bratty grandkid, faster.”

  The boy laughed, harshly. The boy observed in a voice heavy with sarcasm that they must’ve taken a wrong exit to bring them here—“I think we’re in the Marriott.”

  The corridor led into another building, the “Pavilion”—which did resemble an upscale hotel. In the center of the foyer was a burbling fountain into which, already, though the Pavilion had been inaugurated just a few days before, wishers had tossed copper pennies. Overhead were mobiles in the shapes of birds with outspread wings, Disney-renditions of austere Calder sculptures.

  Both the shiny pennies and the floating birds annoyed the boy. A medical clinic isn’t a fun place.

  The smiling young woman prepared to leave them now. “Take the first elevator to the right. On the second floor, turn right. You can’t miss it—‘Ambulatory Surgery.’”

  Now, the strange thing. The unexpected. Too often, in the boy’s recent life, there was this—this extra thing.

  For the young woman was smiling at them, but in a new way. As if she hadn’t taken in both of them, the grandmother and the boy, until now. The boy felt a shiver of dread.

  “You know? I think I remember you. From the old hospital? The two of you? And someone else?” The young woman glanced around as if a missing person might appear. As if one of the strangers passing by in the corridor might turn and smile and identify herself.

  Hi. Bet you wondered where I was.

  Unfamiliar places could be more dangerous than familiar places, unexpectedly. The boy had been discovering that an unfamiliar place was more easily “haunted” than a familiar place simply because there was less there to distract the memory.

  “I don’t think so. I think you must be confusing us with someone else.” With a cool smile the grandmother turned decisively away, as the boy glared at the shining floor in silence.

  On the second floor they turned right. Here was, not a medical unit, but a suite. Very lavishly furnished and decorated, seen through floor-to-ceiling glass panels.

  The grandmother murmured ambiguously, “There are worse places than the Marriott.”


  The boy halted outside the doors to Ambulatory Surgery. It was as if his legs were refusing to function, like comic-robot legs.

  The boy was beginning to experience that feeling—it didn’t have any name, and he couldn’t have described it. And after it lifted, he could not really remember it.

  The grandmother said, “You can wait out here, Billy Bob. You can explore the grounds. You can hang out in the café. What do kids do?”

  Billy Bob was a playful name. A joke-name.

  Nothing very bad could ever happen to Billy Bob, seemed to be the promise.

  The boy indicated his new smartphone, that fit in the palm of his hand. “Grams, never have to ask what kids do.”

  THE BOY DIDN’T ACCOMPANY the grandmother into the suite designated Ambulatory Surgery but the boy remained outside looking in. Through floor-to-ceiling glass panels you could see people in the waiting room who might have been people anywhere, in an airport perhaps, except some of these people were in wheelchairs and some were bald—(bald at a wrong age, and in the wrong sex)—and the boy knew from experience that if he stepped inside the room a certain alteration of the air would unnerve him—he’d begin to feel that strange sad clutching sensation, that was also a sensation like that of sand slipping away beneath your feet, he’d do anything to avoid.

  The grandmother was giving her name to the receptionist. The grandmother would be asked Do you have a living will?

  The boy was sweating in the air-conditioned air.

  The grandmother turned, to point out the boy to the receptionist—there was her designated driver, it was he who would take her home.

  The boy waved to the receptionist to signal That’s right. I’ll be here. No worry!

  The boy was tall: five feet ten. Tallness gave him confidence at times like these.

  For ten minutes or so the boy stood outside the glass panels and made faces at the grandmother who was leafing distractedly through a magazine (the grandmother had brought herself: she knew not to rely on waiting-room reading) and who glanced over at him smiling, or half-smiling—for she was distracted, the boy saw, though pretending not to see or not to register seeing.

  Being a grandkid, you can so easily regress. All the ages you ever were are all recalled by the grandparent, in a shimmery love-haze like those blurred faces on TV in which identities have been disguised.