A Widow's Story Page 12

  If I shake my head, the dark-shimmering thing disappears. If I rub my eyes, that are nearly always watering.

  Unmistakably, my vision has deteriorated in the brief period of time since Ray was hospitalized. Driving in the dark home from the hospital, I’d begun to notice a softening of objects, a kind of haze.

  Often my eyes are so flooded with moisture—tears perversely caused by overly dry eyes—that I have to blink repeatedly, but even then I can’t see clearly. A few years ago following Lasik surgery the vision in both my eyes was highly precise for distances, remarkable for one who’d been myopic for most of her life, now suddenly all that astounding vision is lost, corroding. A wave of panic—not the first of the morning, or even the hour—sweeps over me But if I go blind? How can I take care of this household? What will become of us?

  Vaguely it seems to me—when I am not thinking coherently—that Ray will be coming home from the hospital, eventually. After the car wreck, after a stay in Telemetry—I will be responsible for him, his well-being. I am eager for this opportunity to prove myself, as I’d failed so miserably just recently . . . In this vague fantasy, Ray is not fully aware that I’d abandoned him, in any case Ray is not one to criticize or rebuke.

  Ray is not one to accuse Where were you! When I needed you where were you! Why did you stay away so long! What did you think would happen to me, if you left me alone in that terrible place?

  Chapter 29

  The Lost Husband

  And then, I am beginning to think He will be lost to me. He will disappear.

  I am beginning to think Maybe I never knew him, really. Maybe I knew him only superficially—his deeper self was hidden from me.

  In our marriage it was our practice not to share anything that was upsetting, depressing, demoralizing, tedious—unless it was unavoidable. Because so much in a writer’s life can be distressing—negative reviews, rejections by magazines, difficulties with editors, publishers, book designers—disappointment with one’s own work, on a daily/hourly basis!—it seemed to me a very good idea to shield Ray from this side of my life as much as I could. For what is the purpose of sharing your misery with another person, except to make that person miserable, too?

  In this way, I walled off from my husband the part of my life that is “Joyce Carol Oates”—which is to say, my writing career.

  As he handled our finances generally, so Ray handled the finances generated by this career. As he didn’t read most of what I wrote so he didn’t read most reviews of this work, whether good, bad, or indifferent. Always it has astonished me that writers married to each other—for instance Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne—should share virtually every page they write; my friends Richard Ford and his wife, Kristina, not only share each page they write but read their work to each other—a test of marital love which one as “prolific” as JCO is said to be would dare not risk.

  Perhaps it was naive, to wish to share only good news with a husband. I have always dreaded being the bearer of bad news to anyone—I take no pleasure in seeing another person pained, or distressed—especially not anyone for whom I feel affection.

  Nor do I like being told upsetting news—unless there is a good reason. I can’t help but feel that there is an element of cruelty, if not sadism, in friends telling one another upsetting things for no reason except to observe their reactions.

  On his side, Ray shielded me from the more burdensome side of Ontario Review and our—to me—hopelessly complicated financial situation; he oversaw the household—does the roof need repairing? Does the house need repainting? Does the driveway need repaving?—somehow, Ray had access to this knowledge, that totally eluded me. While I oversaw housecleaning, Ray oversaw the outdoor care of the property. Once, in Detroit, when the subject of husbands came up, my women friends were incredulous to hear that, if something awful happened to me, I would be reluctant to tell Ray; still less could they believe that Ray would shield me from his problems. One of the women said enviously that her husband would never “let her get away” with not knowing his problems even if there was nothing she could do to help him.

  But why? I asked.

  Out of spite, she said.

  And I’d thought Then he can’t love you. If he wants to upset you.

  Ray would never wish to upset me. Very likely Ray shielded from me all sorts of things I never knew, and will never know.

  Maybe in fact Ray was very frightened in the hospital. Maybe he had a premonition that he would never return home—if he had, he would not have told me.

  I don’t think that this is so. I think that he had no idea that he would die, any more than his doctors seemed to have known. But if it had been the case, Ray would not have told me.

  Maybe our way of “shielding” each other from distress was inadvertently a way of eluding each other. Maybe there was something cowardly about my reluctance to acknowledge to my husband, the person to whom I was closest, that all was not perfect in my life—far from it, much of the time.

  But then, I have walled myself off from “Joyce Carol Oates” as well. I can’t think that this has been a mistaken strategy.

  In any case it isn’t one I can modify, at this point in my life.

  But now I am thinking—obviously Ray revealed only a part of himself to me. Obviously, he kept much to himself. If he had not a “secret” life—(though possibly he had)—still there was an eclipsed side to his personality, of which I had no clue.

  Where have you gone?

  What has happened to us?

  How can I reach you?—is there no way, not ever?

  As in a dream of forbidden knowledge I am drawn to Ray’s things. Most rooms of our house are beginning to be difficult to enter but none more than Ray’s study—his “office”—for his presence is so strong here, I’m left breathless. Maybe he has stepped out for a minute. In the bathroom maybe. Getting the mail. Yet I am drawn to Ray’s desk, his files, the shelves of his closets stacked with manuscripts, documents, page proofs and cover designs of bygone seasons. Repeatedly I study Ray’s calendar as if in the hope of discovering something new, mysterious—it’s fascinating to me how assiduously Ray marked the days of his life, and how full most of the days were; and then, each day is crossed off with a triumphant black X. As if Ray had taken particular satisfaction in crossing off his days when they were completed. As if he’d had no idea that these days would be finite; that these Xs made with a Magic Marker pen were accumulating into what would be his recent past; as if, beyond the next months—March, April, May—those wonderfully open, empty, blank days would never be filled.

  I think with horror of the future, in which Ray will not exist.

  Already it has been a week since his death. (How is this possible! Each minute has seemed excruciating.)

  It isn’t just for emotional reasons that I must contemplate Ray’s calendar, of course. So much Ontario Review business is tied to the calendar—there is the deadline for paying the Hopewell Township property tax—a notation for a Culligan delivery—an appointment with Dr. S_—a dentist’s appointment—and (of course!) recycling days—trash pickup days. I begin to feel such sadness, such sorrow, I have to put the calendar aside.

  The phone on Ray’s desk—Ray’s business line—begins to ring. Never would I pick up this receiver, for the caller will say Is Ray Smith there?

  Or Hi Joyce. Can I speak to Ray please?

  Sometime later, I’ll check the voice mail. Maybe. If I can force myself. Or maybe not.

  It occurs to me now, I will search through Ray’s personal papers. I will read—(re)read—all his published work—what I can find of his writing projects. When we’d moved to Princeton from Windsor, in August 1978, Ray had brought a cache of writing projects with him, some of which he’d completed—an essay on the poetry of Ted Hughes, for instance. And other things—notes, sketches, a draft of a novel—parts of which I’d seen. Ray had lost interest in writing, very much preferring to be an editor and publisher, and had ceased thinking about these things, so
far as I knew. But I am excited, for once—I am feeling hopeful. I think I will get to know my husband better. It isn’t too late!

  Chapter 30

  “How Are You?”

  This query has always been baffling to me! For I have no idea how I am, usually.

  Far more logical to reply How do I appear to you? That’s how I am.

  For truly, my “self” is a swirl of atoms not unlike the more disintegrated paintings of J. M. W. Turner—almost, if you peer closely, you can see something amid the atoms, perhaps on the brink of coalescing into a figure—but maybe not.

  Even when Ray was alive, and I was Ray Smith’s wife and not yet Ray Smith’s widow, I found it difficult to respond to this totally innocent, totally conventional social query.

  “How am I? I’m fine! And how are you?”

  From time to time, in a social situation, an individual will acknowledge that things aren’t so good, maybe he/she isn’t so fine, which will derail the conversation in a more personal, pointed direction. But this is rare, and must be handled with extreme delicacy. For it’s in violation of social decorum and people will be sympathetic initially—but finally, maybe not.

  Now, when people see me, when they ask, often with tender solicitude, How are you, Joyce?—I assume that they mean How are you managing, after Ray’s death? Usually I tell them that I am doing very well. For I am, I think—doing very well.

  Interminable days have passed, and interminable nights—and I am still here. This is amazing to me.

  More and more it seems to me, I may have made a wrong decision at the time of Ray’s death. Picking up the phone, calling my friends—making of my plight their concern. Making them feel that they are responsible for me.

  A nobler gesture would have been to erase myself. For there is something terribly wrong in remaining here—in our house, in our old life—talking and laughing with friends—when Ray is gone.

  I feel that others might think this way about me, too. For there is something ignoble, selfish, in continuing to live as if nothing has been altered.

  But I am not strong enough, I think.

  And then—so I tell myself!—I had—I have—many responsibilities to which Ray would have entrusted me. And in the terms of Ray’s will, he has entrusted me.

  Though Ray has left me, it is not so easy for me to leave him.

  “What do you want with me!”

  The thing with the beady dead gem-like eyes—that thing, which now more clearly resembles an ugly lizard of some kind, or a Gila monster, than a sea creature—is ever more frequent now in the corner of my eye, alone here in the house.

  Erase yourself—of course!

  What a hypocrite you are, to pretend not to know this.

  So, it’s good not to be alone! Except, when I am not-alone, I am in the company of other people, and aware of the fact that the one person I wish might be there is not there.

  Thinking always of yourself. Only of yourself. Hypocrite!

  This is true. I am obsessed with my “self” now—whatever it is, it seems to be about to break and be scattered by the wind, like milkweed pollen. Though the “self” has no core yet it is a nexus of random sounds, voices—some of them tender, and some of them jeering, accusatory—

  Love to my honey and my kitties.

  Hypocrite!

  Really, I have no idea how I am. I have become a sort of wraith, or zombie—I know that I am here but have a very vague idea of what here is.

  I have been observed laughing, with friends. My laughter is not forced but seems natural, spontaneous.

  I have been observed staring into space, in the company of friends. Though I am aware of being observed—I try to shake myself, into wakefulness—sometimes it isn’t so easy, to haul myself back.

  Talk at Princeton gatherings is of politics, mainly. America has become a rabidly politicized nation since the election of George W. Bush—since 9/11, ever more a virulently divided nation—it is quite natural that the personal life is submerged in the public life but how lonely, how empty, how spiritually depleted it seems, to one on the outside.

  And so, often I leave for home early. Where Ray and I often stayed late—and were among the last to leave a party—I am now the first person to leave.

  When I am departed, my friends talk about me, I suppose.

  I hope that they are saying Joyce is doing very well isn’t she!

  I hope that they are saying There’s no need to worry about Joyce.

  I can’t bear it, if they are saying How tired Joyce looks!

  If they are saying How thin Joyce looks!

  Poor Joyce!

  Often when I am driving our car, I begin to cry for no clear reason. Often it’s night, I am dreading my return to the (empty, deserted) house in which, on the dining room table, “sympathy baskets” and “floral displays” are still crammed together, and wilted petals are strewn underfoot like tiny bruised faces. Only a light or two will be burning—no longer is the house lit up as if for a festive occasion—the first instant, of unlocking the door—(unless it’s unlocked, I’d forgotten to lock it)—is the hardest, a horrible moment—then, if I can manage, I will slip into the bedroom without having to pass through most of the house—though I can’t avoid passing by Ray’s (darkened, deserted) study where, on his telephone, a red light will be blinking—new messages! Unanswered messages!—these responsibilities clawing at me, I am too exhausted to contemplate.

  But in the car—there’s a kind of free-fall no-man’s-land inside a car—in which one is neither here nor there but in transit.

  If I am in tears while driving, by the time I reach my destination I am no longer crying—I am fine.

  A widow’s emotions—I think this must be generally true—resemble the “lake effect” of the Great Lakes. One moment, a clear sky and sunshine; minutes later, enormous dark thunderheads moving like battalions across the sky; soon after, a lightning storm, churning waves, danger . . . You learn that you can’t predict the weather from visible evidence. You learn to be cautious. The “lake effect” is ordinary time, speeded up.

  But I have become so—sad. I have become one of those blighted/wounded/limping/sinister malcontents in Elizabethan-Jacobean drama— an observer who glances about seeing, not happily smiling individuals, not friends whom I love but individuals destined for terrible, tragic ends—the women to lose their husbands, sooner than they would expect; the men to become ill, to age, to vanish within a few years. I feel a kind of sick terror for my friends, who have been so kind to me—what, one day, will happen to them?

  Of all malcontents, Hamlet is the most eloquent.

  How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,

  Seem to me the uses of this world! . . .

  This is the very voice of paralysis, depression—yet it seems to me in my zombie-state an utterly astute reading of the human condition.

  Still, one must not say so. One must try.

  Asked how she is it is a good idea for the widow to say, brightly, like everyone else, “How am I?—fine.”

  Back home, I am likely to replay Ray’s final message—the one he’d made from his hospital bed just a few hours before he died.

  Though sometimes, I call our home number from my cell phone, to hear Ray’s recorded voice that is so comforting, and which, when they call this number, our friends will hear for a very long time.

  Neither Joyce nor I can come to the phone right now but if you leave a detailed message and your phone number . . . we will get back to you soon. Thank you for calling.

  Chapter 31

  “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter”

  In Detroit, in the mid-1960s, when Ray taught English at Wayne State University, one of his courses was “Introduction to Literature” and among the poems he assigned his students was the elegy “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter” by John Crowe Ransom.

  This beautiful short poem, Ray read to me with such feeling, in his deep, subtly modulated voice, I am moved to tears recalling it. Reading the
poem, which I haven’t looked at in years, I realize that I’ve memorized it, and I’ve memorized it in my husband’s voice.

  There was such speed in her little body,

  And such lightness in her footfall,

  It is no wonder that her brown study

  Astonishes us all.

  Was this Ray’s favorite poem? When I’d first met him in Madison, Wisconsin, Ray could recite a number of classic poems—sonnets by Shakespeare, John Donne, and Milton (“When I Consider How My Light Is Spent”); and he was much admiring of Whitman, Hopkins, Frost, and William Carlos Williams, as well as poetry by a number of our contemporaries whom he was to publish in Ontario Review—but no poem moved him as deeply as “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter.” It is his reading aloud of this poem that is imprinted in my memory—my handsome young husband, his voice quavering with emotion, in our house on Sherbourne Road in the small room at the front of the house, a kind of sunroom, where we sat most evenings to read or prepare our classes for the next day.

  How I wish I could remember what Ray and I said to each other, on one of our ordinary evenings! In that little room, one of the few comfortable rooms in that not very comfortable house, where for so many nights after dinner we sat together on a dark blue sofa facing a window.

  Outside, our lawn, a sidewalk, the street and a facing beige-brick house—this, too, is vividly imprinted in my memory, though I have not thought of it, still less seen it, in decades.

  What could have so absorbed us, in those days? I know that we talked a good deal about our teaching, our classes and colleagues—Ray at Wayne State, me at the University of Detroit—but all this is vanished now. What was urgent, crucial in our lives, even upsetting—all is vanished. Virtually no friends remain from that time. We’d given parties in our large brick Colonial house—almost, I can see our living room with its oddly dark-blue walls, crowded with people—enlivened with laughter—but the faces are blurred, indistinct.

  Some have died—my closest woman friend, prematurely. Others have moved away, altered their lives—our closest Jesuit friend, a colleague at the University of Detroit who’d been a prominent member of the English Department, now no longer a Jesuit, married and living in Texas . . . Tom Porter has left the Church! My God.