A Widow's Story Read online

  Along with prose pieces by several students we discuss, in detail, rending our way through the story line by line as if it were poetry, that early masterpiece of Ernest Hemingway—“Indian Camp.” Four pages long, written when the author was only a few years older than these Princeton undergraduates, the stark and seemingly autobiographical “Indian Camp” never fails to make a strong impression on them.

  How strange it is, how strangely comforting, to read great works of literature throughout our lives, at greatly different phases of our lives—my first reading of “Indian Camp” was in high school, when I was fifteen, and younger than the author; each subsequent reading has been revelatory in different ways; now this afternoon, in this new phase of my life, when it seems to me self-evident that my life is over, I am struck anew by the precision of Hemingway’s prose, exquisite as the workings of a clock. I am thinking how, of all classic American writers, Hemingway is the one who writes exclusively of death, in its manifold forms; the perfect man of action is the suicide, William Carlos Williams once observed, and surely this was true of Hemingway. In a typical Hemingway story foregrounds as well as backgrounds are purposefully blurred, like the contours of his characters’ faces, and their pasts, as in those dreams of terrible simplicity in which stark revelation is the point, and there is no time for digressing.

  At an Indian camp in Northern Michigan to which Nick Adams’s father, a doctor, has been summoned to help with a difficult childbirth, an Indian commits suicide by slashing his throat while lying in the lower bunk of a bunk bed, even as his wife gives birth to their child in the upper bunk. Hemingway’s young Nick Adams is a witness to the horror—before his father can usher him from the scene, Nick has seen him examining the Indian’s wound by “tipping” the Indian’s head back.

  Later, rowing back home from the Indian camp, Nick asks his father why the Indian killed himself and his father says, “I don’t know, Nick. He couldn’t stand things, I guess.”

  No theory of suicide, no philosophical discourses on the subject are quite so revelatory as these words. Couldn’t stand things, I guess.

  How poignant it is to consider that Hemingway would kill himself several decades later, with a shotgun, at the age of sixty-one.

  Suicide, a taboo-subject. In 1925, when “Indian Camp” was first published, in Hemingway’s first book In Our Time, how much more of a taboo-subject than now.

  Suicide is an issue that fascinates undergraduates. Suicide is the subject of a good number of their stories. Sometimes, the suicidal element so saturates the story, it’s difficult to discuss the story as a text without considering frankly the subject, and its meaning to the writer.

  Not that most of these young writers would “consider” suicide—I’m sure—but all of them know someone who has killed himself.

  Sometimes, these suicides have been friends of theirs, contemporaries from high school or college.

  These personal issues, I am not likely to bring into workshop discussions, as I never discuss anything personal about myself, or even my writing. Though I came of age in the 1960s when the borderline between “teacher” and “student” became perilously porous, I am not that kind of teacher.

  My intention as a teacher is to refine my own personality out of existence, or nearly—my own “self” is never a factor in my teaching, still less my career; I like to think that most of my students haven’t read my writing.

  (Visiting writers/instructors at Princeton—I’m thinking of Peter Carey, for instance—and seeing the look of quizzical hurt on Peter’s face—are invariably astonished/crestfallen to discover that their students are not exactly familiar with their oeuvres—but I’m more likely to feel relief.)

  It isn’t an exaggeration to say that, this semester of Ray’s death, my students will be my lifeline. Teaching will be my lifeline.

  Along with my friends, a small circle of friends—this will “keep me going.” I am sure that my students have no idea of the circumstances of my life, and that they are not curious about it; nor will I ever hint to them what I am feeling, at any time; how I dread the conclusion of the teaching-day, and the return to my diminished life.

  It’s a matter of pride to me, that, this afternoon in the workshop, I was no different, or seemed no different, than ever in the past. In my exchanges with my students, I have given them no reason to suspect that anything is amiss in my life.

  In the doorway of my office stand two of my writing students from last semester. One of them, who’d been a soldier in the Israeli army, slightly older than most Princeton undergraduates, says awkwardly, “Professor Oates? We heard about your husband and want to say how sorry we are. . . . If there’s anything we can do . . .”

  I am utterly surprised—I had not expected this. Quickly I tell the young men that I’m fine, it’s very kind of them but I am fine . . .

  When they leave, I shut my office door. I am shaking, I am so deeply moved. But mostly shocked. Thinking They must have known all along today. They must all know.

  Chapter 37

  Bruised Knees

  In the stark unsparing light of 4 A.M. on hands and knees on the chill tile floor of the bathroom sobbing in despair, rage, shame—out of my shaky fingers a little plastic container of capsules has fallen to the floor—capsules have rolled merrily in all directions and I am desperate trying to locate them, groping to locate one that has rolled—has it?—somewhere behind the toilet amid wispy balls of dust like the most forlorn and despised of thoughts—except, where is it?—in dread of running out of my prescription for Lorazepam which helps me to sleep for somewhere beyond three hours each night for I have not yet filled the prescription for Ambien out of apprehension of becoming addicted to whatever this state of being is, this groggy half-sleep, this zombie half-life in which the outlines of things have become blurred and textures flattened like plastic and voices echo at a distance murmurous and jeering as in an obscure language decedent—executrix—fiduciaries—codicil—letters testamentary—residuary estate—haunted by the vision of a stricken bull fallen to its knees in the ring bleeding from myriad wounds in a stream of hot blood provoking a deranged crowd to roar —here I am stricken on my knees, face pounding with blood, in this life shorn of meaning as trash blown across a befouled pavement is shorn of meaning, or the young dogwood tree in the courtyard ravaged by winter is shorn of meaning.

  Without meaning, the world is things. And these things multiplied to infinity.

  Six capsules remaining—one is missing—I can’t find—on hands and knees groping, sobbing—thinking This is what you deserve, who had been protected from such misery for too long. Suffer!

  Chapter 38

  A Dream of Such Happiness!

  My parents are asking me Where is Ray?

  My parents—only just middle-aged, thus “young”—as they’d been when, not so very long ago, they’d come to visit us in our Princeton house, and stayed in the “guest suite” we’d designed for them. And my mother Carolina who loved to cook helped me prepare meals in the kitchen, and my father Fred who loved music played piano in the living room. And the glass house that was usually so still with just Ray and me in it seemed to expand and to glow with life.

  Except—in this dream—which is in fact a happy dream—my parents are asking about Ray. For somehow, Ray isn’t here. And it has never been the case that my parents came to stay here, and Ray was not here. With childlike earnestness I am assuring them that Ray is all right—He will join us later.

  In particular my mother is anxious as if not believing me, exactly—but I am able to convince her.

  Ray will be here for dinner.

  Or maybe I told her Ray will be home for dinner.

  Here is the situation: my parents loved Ray as if he were their own son and so in the dream, I don’t want them to know that Ray is in the hospital. (For this is the dream’s secret—Ray is in the hospital now—he is still alive!) Of all things, I dread worrying my parents about anything, most of all about Ray. Or me.

&
nbsp; It doesn’t seem strange to me that my parents’ faces are blurred as if undersea. Nor that the farther walls of our living room have vanished. The room is scarcely furnished—in fact, it doesn’t seem to be our living room or any room familiar to me.

  Yes—I understand that my parents Carolina and Fred whom I love so much are not living. Still, they are here with me, and I am so very happy in their presence, though the happiness is tinged with anxiety for it’s my responsibility to keep my parents from suspecting both that they are not living and that Ray is in the hospital.

  The dream communicates the social awkwardness of such a situation: I must shield my parents from this double knowledge that would so upset them.

  Yet thinking It’s a good thing that Mom and Daddy can’t know what has happened to Ray. That’s the only good thing about being where they are.

  Chapter 39

  “We Want to See You Soon”

  She’s a lovely woman, a colleague at the University, not a close friend but of that nimbus of friendly acquaintances who in the aftermath of Ray’s death have sent cards, flowers; she has sent me an e-mail saying that she and her husband, who teaches at another university, want to invite me to dinner at their house soon, and what are some evenings that are possible for me; and so I have responded, for there are many empty evenings indicated in my calendar, in March; in such empty evenings lurks the horror vacui that so terrified the ancient Egyptians, this horror vacui that seeps from the outer, darkened rooms of the house into the bright-lighted bedroom; and so what better remedy, if a temporary remedy, than a dinner with friends, to dispel this horror.

  Yes it’s true—often I see my small circle of friends. My friends who are my family, whom I love. Often, very often we speak on the phone, we exchange e-mails. Still there are empty evenings, in the nest trying to concentrate—reading—trying to read—offprints of Ray’s literary essays and reviews from twenty years ago—bound galleys which publishers have sent me, requesting blurbs—(a blurb! from me!—how like a cruel joke this seems)—my old battered Modern Library edition of Pascal’s Pensées which falls open at the most frequently read/annotated pages—

  The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me. It is a horrible thing to feel all that we possess slipping away. Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.

  The last act is tragic, however happy all the rest of the play is; at the last a little earth is thrown upon our head, and that is the end forever.

  We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end. When we think to attach ourselves to any point and to fasten to it, it wavers and leaves us; and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes forever. Nothing stays for us. This is our natural condition, and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses. (Translation by W. F. Trotter)

  Trying to ignore the lizard-thing hovering at the periphery of my vision regarding me with calm impassive tawny-staring eyes I am patient, I can wait. I can outwait you.

  And so what better remedy than a dinner with friends except the lovely C_ replies to my e-mail saying that, of the dates I’ve named, not one is quite right.

  For it seems, C_ is hoping to compose a dinner party of heroic proportions. Where I’d thought the dinner would be just C_ and her husband and another couple perhaps, it is revealed that C_ wants to invite X, Y, Z—All friends of yours, Joyce—who want to see you, too—but these others, one of them a university president with a very busy schedule, can’t make the dates we’ve marked in pencil, maybe other dates, maybe later in the month, or early April—finally, I send C_ an e-mail suggesting that we have just a small dinner, just her and her husband and one or two other couples—but C_ insists So many people want to see you, Joyce!—she has ten guests “committed” for a Saturday in early April—except, R_, a mutual friend, can’t make this date—also S_, who will be in Rome at a conference on international law—and so, could I look at my calendar again; more e-mails are exchanged; at last C_ has invited eighteen people—several of them “friends” whom I have not seen in a very long time—but of these, one or two are “tentative”—and so C_ must change the date another time; the new date suggested isn’t a date that I can make; another time, C_ must change the date; I am beginning to realize that though C_ has said that she and her husband are “eager” to see me they are in fact dreading to see me; to that end, C_ is erecting obstacles to our dinner as in an equestrian trial in which each jump must be higher than its predecessor, and more dangerous; I envision a thirty-foot dining room table and at the farther end the widow placed like a leper, as far from the lovely C_ as possible. I would so much prefer a small dinner, just you and your husband and another couple perhaps, I think that’s what I would like best which pleading e-mail C_ seems never to receive or, receiving, chooses to ignore; abruptly then, our e-mails on the subject cease; the heroic dinner party imagined by the lovely C_ never materializes.

  I will not hear from C_ again for a very long time though mutual acquaintances will assure me, C_ misses you, she says, and wants to see you soon!

  Chapter 40

  Moving Away

  “Good afternoon! Is it—Joyce?”

  Yes it is Joyce. Steeling herself for the next, inevitable question Where is your husband, Joyce?

  Or maybe, since everyone is on friendly, first-name terms here at the Hopewell Valley Fitness Center, the cheery blond receptionist will ask Where is Ray, Joyce?

  But she doesn’t ask about Ray. If she’s curious—for I’ve never stepped into the Fitness Center except with Ray—(though Ray sometimes came here without me)—she doesn’t let on.

  The blond receptionist is unflaggingly sunny, upbeat—as one of the Fitness Center trainers she’s professionally obliged to be upbeat—but she isn’t naive. For of course husbands must vanish from the rosters of the Fitness Center frequently: separation, divorce, death?

  Separation and divorce are more likely than death, among the Fitness Center members. Since really old and/or “unfit” men aren’t likely to belong to a health club.

  In any case, it wouldn’t be diplomatic to ask. And maybe the blond receptionist sees in my face a certain tightening, a tension around the eyes pleading Don’t ask please!

  All fitness centers are places of hope, optimism. Belief in the future as progress. Every gain is good!

  Ray’s trainer never failed to praise him. The more praise, the harder Ray tried. For he’d meant to be “fit”—to “maintain fitness.”

  We’d come to the Fitness Center, on the average, about three times a week, for the past several years. We came only in the winter months.

  It is very strange to be here without him. I have to think—to realize—he isn’t behind me on the stairs, or outside at the car. He hasn’t gone ahead of me to begin stretching exercises.

  When you pass your plastic card through a device here at the check-in counter, a mechanical voice chirps THANK YOU HAVE A GOOD WORKOUT!

  I have come to the fitness center for a purpose. I think it must be for exercise—unless it’s to terminate my membership.

  Physical exercise!—exertion! This will be my solace.

  If I can exhaust myself, maybe I can sleep. Maybe I can sleep “normally.” Parts of my brain feel as if they’re carbonated. The kind of carbonation that fizzes out of the bottle and runs down your hand.

  The Fitness Center is about two miles from our home, just off busy Route 31. It’s a building of no distinction, windowless, fluorescent-lit, exuding perpetual music—“soft rock”—“pop standards”—in a cheery upbeat tempo.

  Sometimes, this music would be intrusive. Loud, bland, persistent, brainless. When I couldn’t bear it any longer I would find areas in the building—unoccupied, sometimes darkened—into which the music wasn’t piped, and there I would run
in place, or sit and take notes on whatever was preoccupying me at the time, while Ray worked out on the machines.

  Often I remained outside. I preferred the outdoors, running/jogging/walking along a track, or trails. In a field beside the Fitness Center I would run in a large figure eight, in a trance of happiness—an ordinary/domestic happiness—for running has always been thrilling to me, both invigorating and comforting.

  Running for me has always been meditation, contemplation.

  Though now such states of mind are fearful to me, for I am not able to control my thoughts.

  Sagely Ralph Waldo Emerson observed A man is what he is thinking all day long. We can assume that by man the philosopher did not exclude woman.

  If we can control our thoughts, we can control—what? Only our feelings, emotions. Only our thoughts. Of the vast unfathomable world beyond ourselves, we have not the slightest control.

  How sad it is to recall, the brilliant Emerson “lost” his mind as he aged. Many years of his later life he existed in a state of consciousness like a light slowly dimming, fading.

  This is the dark, ironic, slyly cruel rejoinder to Emerson’s sunny optimism. How self-reliance when there is no self?

  For days—weeks?—I’ve been intending to come to the Fitness Center. For here, I am not-known, as Ray was not-known—a few of the employees recognized us as Ray, Joyce—but nothing more about us.

  I am trying now not to imagine an alternative universe—in fact, this would be a universe far more probable, plausible, and recognizable than this universe—in which Ray was with me, as he’d always been. Outside in the car I’d been parked for several minutes without moving from the driver’s seat. Staring at the stucco wall of the building waiting for—what? My life now seems to be waiting, waiting for something to happen, waiting for something to be decided, waiting to know what I must do next. Alone in the car—here? But why? Without a companion to say Well—why are you just sitting there? Let’s get out. Here we are.