Sourland Read online

  My voice trailed off. I knew that I had upset him & knew that he could not turn to face me while he was driving, to protest.

  Yet: without speaking Tyrell pulled the station wagon off the highway & turned onto a gravel service road—the abruptness of his behavior was exciting to me, & unnerving—behind us traffic streamed on the highway but this was a desolate place amid stunted trees & sand dunes & scattered trash & out of sight of the highway Tyrell braked the station wagon & turned to me & his shadowed face was anguish & his hands were on me roughly & in desperation—his mouth on mine, his tongue in my mouth hungry & strangely cool & I held him in my arms in triumph feeling the strength of my biceps & my shoulders flow into the man, though I could not match the man in physical strength yet he would have to acknowledge the strength & the suppleness of my body & he said, “Don’t say such things, Jane—I love you so much, Jane, there is no one but you. There is no one”—pulling at my clothing, at the pleated skirt & now his hands were on the prosthetic limbs fumbling to detach them from my thigh-stumps & he was moaning—trembling—he was desperate with love for me & behind the rain-splotched windshield of the vehicle that same waxy-pale moon now a diminished quarter-moon, winking.

  No one Jane but you.

  Nothing but this.

  In the night he cries out in his sleep. He thrashes, he shivers, he shudders & I am frightened of his sudden strength, if he tries to defend himself against a dream-assailant. From his throat issue loud crude animal cries, like nothing I have heard from him before. With some difficulty I manage to wake him & he’s uncertain of where he is & agitated & by degrees becomes calmer & finally laughs—he has turned on the bedside lamp, he has fumbled to find a cigarette in a trouser pocket—saying he’d had a nightmare. Some “ridiculous” creature with sharp teeth & a stunted head like a crocodile was trying to eat him—devour him.

  I ask him if he often has nightmares & he laughs irritably saying who knows or gives a damn—“Dreams are debris to be forgotten.”

  Later: “I dreamt that we were both dead. But very happy. You said Maybe we will never be born.”

  Then in early April, I saw him.

  In the East Shore Mall, I saw him.

  Suddenly then & with no preparation, Tyrell Beckmann & his family.

  On their strong, whole legs. As in the central open atrium of the Mall I approached these strangers & saw how one of them, the male, the husband & father, materialized into Tyrell who was my lover—this was a shock!—this was an ugly surprise—yet I did not falter unless for a half-second, a heartbeat & immediately then I had recovered & on my crutches gripped beneath my arms like paddles or wings & my useless but showy plastic legs swinging I flew past them—swift as an arrow Jane Erdley can move, at such times propelled by adrenaline like a wounded creature.

  His face. A startled blur as I flew past on my crutches staring straight ahead & ignoring him. Tyrell, the wife, the two daughters—within seconds I was past them. The younger of the two girls sucked at her fingers murmuring to her mother Ohhh what happened to that lady—oh did it hurt!

  Beside her an older sister, ten or eleven, fleshier & resembling the mother crinkled up her face & rudely stared after me.

  Ohhh is she crippled? Is she missing her legs? Ohhh that’s ugly.

  But already I was past, unseeing. And not a backward glance.

  Immediately I left the Mall. Immediately retreating to lick my wounds & to prevent further humiliation & on the bus back to Shore Island my brain in a frenzy replayed the scene. Helpless & furious replaying the scene like one digging at a raw wound with a fingernail.

  I did not choose to linger on my guilty lover’s face. For in that moment it was clear that Tyrell Beckmann was not my lover. The man’s allegiance was to his family—the wife, the daughters. In his shocked face & alarmed eyes there was no discernible love for Jane Erdley only just startled recognition & a cowardly terror of being found out, exposed. Instead, I concentrated on the wife—I did not know the wife’s name, Tyrell had not told me—a woman in her late thirties or perhaps older—solid-bodied, husky—brown hair of no discernible style brushed back from her face round as a moon—fleshy cheeks, flushed with color—staring eyes though veiled, unlike her rude daughter—not a striking woman but you could see she’d been attractive when younger, with slackening jowls, a fatty chin—a look of competence, capability about her & yet some slight worry, anxiety—a tiredness in the fleshy-female body—a no-longer-young mother harried by two children of whom the younger was fretting & dragging at her arm & her husband—her prince of a husband—walking a few feet ahead of his family in corduroy slacks, pullover sweater, running shoes frowning as he leafed through a glossy brochure advertising some sort of expensive electrical appliance. In the positioning of wife/mother—husband/father—you could see the dynamics of their family & the thought came to me, as consolation She is wary of losing him. Of course she is anxious, & she is resentful. As she ages, her prince of a husband will remain young.

  What I saw was: the woman’s eyes glancing onto me, dropping to my lower body & to the artificial limbs—taking in my crutches, & the dexterity with which I manipulated the crutches—you could see that I’d been doing this a long time & had learned to propel myself forward with a kind of defiant ease—& the woman’s eyes that were smallish, piggish, with scanty brown lashes—narrowed in disdain or revulsion just perceptibly & in those eyes not a glimmer of sympathy for me as for one like herself who has been afflicted with grievous bodily harm, this woman who was Mrs. Tyrell Beckmann did not wish to acknowledge There but for the grace of God am I.

  That arrow, shot into my heart.

  And what would you like for Christmas, little girl? Tell Santa!

  Very little of this I remember. I never dream of it since I don’t remember.

  How at the age of eleven my legs above the knees were amputated & taken from me & I would not run again nor even walk except with crutches flailing & falling & both missing legs alive with pain like invisible flame. How it was Daddy’s fault for Daddy had been drinking at the Fourth of July picnic & afterward driving to the traffic circle for a bag of ice & six-packs of cold beer & his favorite child Jane-Jane in the passenger’s seat beside him & in the confusing dimness of dusk & headlights on the highway there was a head-on collision with a truck whose headlights were blinding or maybe it was just that Daddy fell asleep at the wheel, drunk-Daddy’s eyelids were drooping & drunk-Daddy’s mouth drooping & in an instant the vehicles careened together & the front of Daddy’s car was smashed flat like a snub nose.

  I was pried from the wreckage. So it was said. I have no memory of this.

  Mostly my face was spared. Except for glass-cuts, bruises & welts but the skin itself was not torn off nor the face-bones smashed. As if God meant to mock: a pretty-girl face on a broken body.

  Many of the bones of my body were broken, fractured or sprained but the spinal column was spared, & the skull. All of the parts of my body were great lurid bruises orange & purple like rotted fruit. Both my legs, both my feet & my knees were smashed. There were few bones remaining intact. The calf of my right leg was sheared off. Much of my blood was lost. Transfusions kept me alive. Yet, I had died. It was said that my heart ceased beating more than once. In surgery for six hours & the heart will cease beating after such trauma. Six hours surgery but this made little difference. The leg-bones were lost. The muscle-flesh had been torn away. The surgeon would operate above the knees. The stumps were made to be the same size. The nerve-endings were cauterized. By the age of twelve I’d been fitted with prostheses—prosthetic legs—but these were clumsy & hateful & I could not manage them at first—it would require many weeks & months—it would require years—before I would acquire the skill to use these plastic legs in the way that I do now provoking relatives & friends of our family to say within my hearing as if such words were a gift to the tragic cripple-girl Isn’t Jane wonderful! Isn’t Jane brave! Isn’t Jane a miracle.

  My father was very shamed. My father too w
as injured but he did not lose his legs nor any of his limbs though he would never walk fully upright again & without pain. His ribs were broken & chest muscles lacerated & he could not lie in bed but required a special chair of soft leather with moveable parts that could be lowered & raised & yet often he would scream in pain like a stricken animal. He took painkillers & he continued to drink. He could not look upon me. His shame was so great he could not look upon the prosthetic legs with the perky name Step Up! & he could not bear to hear my crutches against the hardwood floor. It was my mother & my aunt who drove me to the rehab clinic at Robert Wood Johnson so many months. After my father was gone from us at Christmastime we drove to the Fair Hills Mall which is the largest shopping mall in all of New Jersey & there we shopped for presents & when I was tired we stopped to rest & looked at the Christmas tree lights & animated figures & there was Santa Claus on his throne, I was too old & my eyes ringed with the fatigue of an old child but in my Step Up! artificial legs, braces, & crutches, I was small for my age, never would I catch up with other children my age as I would not return to school with my class but would remain a year behind forever. At this time I was almost thirteen but so small I might have been eleven, or ten. Inside his fluffy fake-beard Santa smiled at me as my mother urged me forward. “My little girl is a brave little girl Santa isn’t she! Her name is Jane.”

  “Well—Jane! Hel-lo little girl how are you!”

  “Jane is very well, Santa. Jane is doing very well.”

  Santa’s eyes narrowed in concern. Santa’s cheeks blushed beneath the silly white whiskers, you could see. Santa was compelled to ask, “And what would you like for Christmas this year, Jane?” as Santa asked all the children who came to sit on his knee. I felt the man stiffen, I felt the man steel himself, what words little cripple-Jane might utter. & my mother gripping me, my arm, as if I were a doll who might topple over without Mommy holding tight & smiling as if nothing was more natural than to bring a twelve-year-old legless dispirited child to Santa Claus at the Fair Hills Mall & await her answer to Santa’s question.

  I was not a young child even then. I felt sorry for Santa. In a scratchy broken little doll-voice saying, “For Christmas I would like Cowgirl Barbie.”

  Whether my father was made to go away or whether my father went away of his own volition was not clear. He would move to another state, Minnesota. Some time later he would move to Wyoming. He would drink himself to death as it was said by my mother & my mother’s family grim with satisfaction.

  My mother said it was a blessing he had gone, & I was blessed of God & one day I would understand.

  “Why should I believe that?” I asked her.

  I was an angry-mouthed girl. I have learned to hide this.

  “Because”—my mother chose her words with care, fixing her eyes on my face as if there was no other part of me that could be looked-at, without revulsion—“if God didn’t love Jane very much, He would have smote her down when he took her poor legs. He had that opportunity, & He let it pass.”

  The man who is Mr. Erdley who has been my father for many years, who is a professor of engineering at Rutgers New Brunswick, is my stepfather. It is expected of me to say that I love my stepfather as I had loved Daddy long ago but this is not true & I do not say it.

  At the library at the circulation desk was another librarian & through that long day I remained in the rear at a computer typing in book orders & I did not think of him—of Tyrell—I would not think of him—& when he came into the library rushed & breathless in the late afternoon, as I had expected he would come, I did not see him nor was Jane Erdley anywhere in his sight. That weekend he had called me—he had left phone messages which I had not answered. He’d sent emails which I deleted without reading. He has betrayed me. There is no love between us. There is nothing—these words chill & hard & resolute as polished stones were a consolation to me. & then through a doorway I saw him, abruptly there was Tyrell, leaning on my crutches I stood very still & calm & observed him—the man who was my lover & who so claimed to love me, yet had been appalled by the sight of me in the Mall; my lover who had been terrified of me, that I would expose him to his wife & rude staring daughters.

  At last, he saw me. In his face a look of anguish—I felt the force of his love, & his regret—quickly I drew back, & hid from him.

  Thinking Maybe it isn’t over yet. Not yet.

  When I left the library that evening—not with the others but at 6:25 P.M. there was Tyrell waiting at the rear & seeing me approach the door quickly he came forward & pulled the door open as I pushed it & in a lowered voice though there was no one within earshot he said, “Jane, may I carry you?—just to my station wagon let me carry you,” & this time I did not say No.

  In his arms I feel airy, guiltless. My arm around his neck, my stump-thighs borne aloft in his embrace. The crutches he leaves behind, leaning against the rear wall of the library. In the car he settles me, buckles me into the seat belt & returns to the crutches & positions them beneath his arms—Tyrell is several inches taller than I am, & so the crutches are short for him—he is clumsy & funny using them—“walking”—he has not the knack of swinging his body, his legs as if they were useless, lifeless. But he is very funny—we are both laughing—breathless & giddy like drunken lovers.

  At the station wagon Tyrell shoves the crutches into the backseat with a clatter—he seizes my shoulders, seizes my head, my face framed in his hands & he kisses me—his kisses are hungry, predatory—he begs me to forgive him & exulting in my power which is the most exquisite sexual power I tell the man Yes maybe. This time.

  Our naked bodies. The man’s body is heavier & thicker than you would think. His chest is nearly hairless, & the hairs a very pale brown, almost invisible. His man-breasts are flat but the nipples are small & hard as pits. On his back, like an outline of wings, are whorls of hair. At his waist, a ring of excess flesh. With what passion the man licks, kisses, sucks at my thigh-stumps, that end above my knees; very excited, aroused, the man lifts my stumps onto his shoulders & presses his hot hungry face between them. What he does to me with his lips, teeth & tongue is near-unbearable to me, in a delirium I murmur his name, I cry out his name, I am utterly helpless, lost. In orgasm the man is rocked as by a sudden powerful wave yet within minutes he has begun again licking, kissing, sucking at the thigh-stumps Love love love you there is no one like you & there is nothing like this.

  It is not true as Tyrell believes, that no man ever carried me in his arms as Tyrell has.

  In Atlantic City, this occurred. But only once, when I was new to Barnegat & lonely & reckless one weekend.

  The man was a stranger—of course—& the name I gave him was not my true name nor did he know where I lived or how I was employed though I saw in his watering eyes that unmistakable look of sick-helpless love. For without my Step Up! legs I am petite as a child, I weigh so little a man of below average height & strength can lift me & carry me in his arms. & nothing further came of this. So little do I recall, I could not tell you the name of the glittering casino & hotel where we met, in a lounge near the blackjack tables. It was a meeting I entered into of my own volition but with much doubt & distaste & abruptly then I ended it without telling the man, fled from a women’s restroom & back to Barnegat, on the bus.

  As I said, he did not know my name. Had he wished to find me, he could not.

  He will leave her, he says. His wife.

  He speaks bravely, recklessly. You would believe that he speaks sincerely.

  He wants to live with me, he says. He loves me, he thinks that we should live together…

  His words are stunning to me, unreal. My heart begins to beat quick, hard & erratically. Calmly I say to him—my voice is light, lightly teasing—“You loved her when you married her—you can’t deny that”—& Tyrell protests, “No. I don’t think so” & I say, cruelly, “What do you mean—you ‘don’t think so’—not only did you marry your wife, you had two children with her. You must love her,” & he says, speaking slowly,
grimly, “I was lonely when we met—I was desperate to be ‘normal’—Courtney was somehow there—she wanted a more permanent relationship & I didn’t want to hurt her—There is so little between us now, only the children, household matters, problems—the minutiae of life. Nothing like what I feel for you. Nothing like what binds us together. Courtney is a good decent woman & of so little interest to me, I have difficulty listening to her—her flat whining hurt voice—even when we were newly married we didn’t ‘have sex’ often—& never, now—we’ve become old people—prematurely old—only the children & the household keep us together—a kind of adhesive—adhesive tape, soiled & frayed—we’re like people of the 1950s—that feels like us, when you see a movie of that era, or photographs—the men wearing hats, fedoras—the men so determined to be mature—the women wearing hats, gloves—stockings—‘girdles’—the photography in black & white, not color. What infuriates me is how Courtney complains of me, to the children—she speaks of me in the third person to them, so that I can overhear—she says, ‘Does Daddy love us? Daddy never tells us that he loves us’—” his voice going shrill, mocking; a voice of such masculine derision, for a moment I am silenced; for a moment pricked with guilt, sympathy for the contemptible unloved female.

  Then recovering I say, in my lightly teasing voice, “So—what do you tell this poor woman?” & Tyrell says, “I tell her—‘Courtney, why should that matter? Why the hell should that matter so much?’”