Nemesis Page 27

  “I … didn’t want to appear excitable, ‘hysterical.’”

  “But you must have known, if you’d discovered he’d lied to throw suspicion on Brendan Bauer, there would have had to be a reason. And you’d gone to Bangor, you’d done some investigating—”

  “Yes but I was—I wanted it secret.”

  “Why ‘secret’? At the risk of being killed?”

  “Because though I knew Calvin was involved I couldn’t bear to think that—he was involved. And his sister—”

  Detective Sergeant David Miles stared at Maggie Blackburn in her hospital bed at the Medical Center. Too sedated to entirely assess that look, still less to gauge how, in her battered disoriented state, she might appear to him, Maggie tried to smile, stretched her swollen lips, and murmured, as if shyly, or stubbornly, “I had to trust my own judgment.”

  Miles said, “Your judgment was really quite sound. It’s your sentiment that interfered.”

  Maggie decided not to tell David Miles of her suspicion, or was it in fact a certainty, that Caroline Gould, and not Calvin Gould, had sent the poisoned chocolates to Rolfe Christensen. Hadn’t Calvin all but admitted it, in his zeal to protect her? I killed them both. I killed them both. I killed them both.

  As the detective was leaving, Maggie called out, managing again a painful smile, “Mr. Miles, may I ask one thing?—if it isn’t too embarrassing?”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you ever suspect—me? I mean, of Rolfe Christensen’s death.”

  With an equanimity that reminded Maggie of her father, in the days of his prime, David Miles said, “Yes of course. But not as strongly as we’d suspected Bauer.”

  “We might have been accomplices, though. Brendan and me.”

  “Yes, we’d thought of that too.”

  “‘Poison is the weapon of choice, Miss Blackburn, for people like you’—I remember your saying that to me,” Maggie said. “‘For that type of personality that can’t bear violence.’”

  David Miles frowned, considering. “Did I say that? Those words? Really? To you? It doesn’t sound like me at all.”

  Maggie felt a clutch of fear suddenly. “Then who does it sound like?” she asked.

  If Caroline Gould was in fact the poisoner, the first of the Forest Park murderers, the twin whose act propelled the other twin to act, there was never any evidence to support such a theory: no potassium cyanide, for instance, found on the property owned by Calvin Gould; no incriminating diary of Rolfe Christensen’s, or other items taken from his house. Not even wrapping paper, wrapping tape, string. If any such evidence had existed it had naturally been destroyed.

  Nor could there be any proof connecting the purchase of the gourmet chocolates with Caroline Gould; any more than there was proof connecting the murder of Nicholas Reickmann with Calvin Gould—except for Calvin’s thoughtful confession, so neatly prepared, so carefully signed, in an envelope left on his desk in the provost’s office. I killed them both.

  And there was the remark he’d made to Maggie, angrily, hopefully. So you acknowledge it, then: you know that I killed both men.

  In fact, the distraught Caroline Gould insisted, in periods of relative lucidity, in the hospital, that she had killed—“ten, twenty, fifty people”—many of them back in Maine. Excitedly, she’d named names: among the alleged victims were her mother and father (who had died of cancer and heart disease respectively, years ago) and her brother Calvin, whose vehicular death had been described to her as “accidental.”

  Such confessions were attributed to the woman’s mental state, of course. For it was an undisputed medical fact, Caroline Gould had suffered a psychotic collapse.

  And there remained the mystery, in some ways the most puzzling mystery of all, of Bill Queller’s disappearance.

  “Do you think—Calvin killed him too?”

  “Do you think—he killed himself?”

  “Is it possible for a man to—simply disappear?”

  So everyone speculated, except Maggie Blackburn, who had lost her taste for such speculation, as, so very abruptly, she’d lost her taste for what might be called criminal detection.

  Calvin had hinted, hadn’t he, that he might have been responsible for Bill’s vanishing; yet it did not seem to Maggie that Calvin could have coerced Bill to walk out of the concert hall that evening as he’d done, so dramatically, so irrevocably. One minute enduring waves of applause for a performance in which he hadn’t much pride, the next minute turning and walking out. Forever. As if, with an impatient flick of someone’s wrist, a radio or a stereo had been switched off, its musical notes rudely silenced.

  Gradually, people ceased speculating about Bill Queller: his fate had been eclipsed by the more desperate fates of others. Maggie, who had liked Bill, and admired him, came to feel, guiltily, that in some obscure way she had failed him.

  I am the cello, you are the piano, these notes are the thoughts passing through the dead Beethoven’s mind.

  “I must leave.”

  Yes, Maggie was grateful to be alive, and, apart from the scattering of tiny scars on her face, she bore no trace of the beating she’d suffered. Yet she knew within days of the attack, and the ensuing publicity and scandal, that she would have to leave Forest Park.

  Where she’d been so happy, for nearly seven years.

  So hopeful.

  There were too many memories for her, memories cruelly overlaid upon her most innocent daily routines: driving to the Conservatory campus, parking her car in the usual lot, crossing the quadrangle to her office building … where, one March morning, Maggie realized that her face was contorted with grief and her hands were shaking uncontrollably. Another time, apparently unable to get out of her car, she woke from a sort of trance to discover herself sitting behind the wheel, a full hour after having driven into the parking lot. The episode frightened her. It was likely that certain of her colleagues had noticed her there sitting stony-faced and staring, perhaps some had even waved to her, called out hello … without her knowing. Her physical being had been there but where had she been?

  I don’t want to have a breakdown, Maggie thought, like her.

  Like a low-grade fever the thought began to burn in her: she must leave Forest Park.

  She must escape from not only the persistent thought of Calvin Gould but the denial of that thought; the suppression of her deep unhappiness and dismay at having lost the man irrevocably … even as she knew such a sentiment was grotesque.

  Sensing her state of mind, or nerves—for Maggie had become, in the eyes of her friends, a victim, requiring solicitude—the Dean of the Faculty Peter Fisher took her to lunch one day in late March, to make her an unexpected proposal of a year’s leave at full salary: she might go abroad, travel, give piano recitals, immerse herself again in her music … try to forget. And the MacLeods, who were planning to spend several weeks in Florence in June, invited her to accompany them as their guest: “And when we get back, why don’t you sell your house and buy another,” Portia said, “that’s what I would do.”

  Portia meant: because you were terrorized in that house.

  Because, there, Calvin Gould beat you into insensibility.

  Maggie politely thanked these friends, and others, for their kindness; she had a sense of their monitoring her behavior and apparent welfare behind her back and reporting about her to one another. Yet she had to leave. She felt she had no choice. Now the fever had taken hold, it began to burn like passion.

  Like the majority of her colleagues, Maggie Blackburn frequently received offers from other teaching institutions inquiring into the possibility of her taking another position elsewhere. In the past, she had always declined; but she’d been attracted to the University of Minnesota for personal as well as academic reasons since the chairman of the Music Department there was a former teacher of hers from the Boston Conservatory, whom she admired very much; and, of course, there was her family connection with Minneapolis–St. Paul, long neglected. She had not been back to that part
of the country since the death of one of her aunts, a decade before. Suddenly, she felt excitement: would it not be like going home, to move back to Minnesota? Yet, at the same time, as in a fairy tale, might it not be like beginning her life anew?

  So, to the astonishment of her friends and colleagues in Forest Park, Maggie discreetly reactivated the invitation from the chairman at Minnesota and by the first of May had accepted the offer of an associate professorship in the department; by the first of June she’d sold her house on Acacia Drive; by the first of September she was preparing to move to Minnesota. And Brendan Bauer, Maggie’s frequent companion, had managed somehow, with characteristic resourcefulness, to acquire a teaching assistantship in the department … so he too was leaving Forest Park.

  Leaving, with Maggie Blackburn?

  But what did that mean?

  As soon as Brendan learned of Maggie’s plans for leaving Forest Park, before, even, Maggie had accepted the offer from the University of Minnesota, he’d come to her and said earnestly, “I want to go with you—don’t say no, Maggie!” He snatched up her hand in both his hands and kissed it: these days, where Maggie Blackburn was concerned, Brendan was given to impulsive gestures.

  Since charges of first-degree murder against him had been dropped by Forest Park authorities, Brendan Bauer was a new man, or nearly. In repose, his face shifted to an expression of equanimity; the majority of the time, his speech was clear of any impediment; he was, to Maggie’s eye not very successfully, even growing a beard. Seeing him at a distance or hearing him play her piano, Maggie felt a sense of satisfaction, as if, in a way, the young man were her accomplishment. She thought of how crudely his family had treated him, how little faith they’d had in him, and what shame they’d felt, and it was impressed upon her that he had no family really, unless it was Maggie Blackburn herself.

  Yet she insisted, “I don’t believe I can ever love you, Brendan,” and Brendan would agree almost too readily.

  “Oh, that’s all right, Maggie—I can love you.”

  And Maggie would say doubtfully, “But—is that enough?” adding quickly, “Of course I’m very fond of you.” And, further, “I suppose it’s the case now, you’ve become my closest friend.”

  And Brendan would say, “And you’re my only friend, Maggie—the only friend I truly want.”

  Maggie Blackburn could not bring herself, finally, to say no to Brendan Bauer’s plea to take him with her to Minneapolis.

  There, in that new setting, the two were considered a couple … but what sort of couple, precisely? They were not married, evidently, but were they lovers? Since Maggie Blackburn was a tenured professor, a woman in her mid- or early thirties, and Brendan Bauer was a graduate student who looked much younger, it seemed probable, to some observers, that they were professional colleagues, linked by way of a common interest in music. In which case, Brendan might be renting a room in Maggie’s house and sharing household expenses, living in her house but not living with her.

  Then again, they often displayed affection for each other, of a kind. So perhaps in fact they were lovers.

  On the subject of Brendan Bauer, Maggie Blackburn’s new circle of friends were divided: some considered the young composer bright, charming, and talented; others considered him brash, impetuous, and argumentative. Like many composers of his generation he disdained older conventional musical forms, but unlike most of these young composers, in academic circles at least, he did not hesitate to express his opinions. When Maggie suggested that he be more diplomatic, Brendan said, surprised, “But shouldn’t I tell the truth, Maggie?”

  In Minneapolis, Maggie Blackburn and Brendan Bauer lived on a residential street called Aspen, in a two-story house of stone, stucco, and wood, undistinguished among its neighbors. Maggie’s metallic-gray Volvo was frequently in the driveway; both she and Brendan drove it. Residents of Aspen Street, before being formally introduced to Maggie Blackburn or Brendan Bauer, were led to assume, by the couple’s relative ages and a glancing similarity between them—height, body type, skin tone, manner—that the two might be sister and brother.

  One Saturday afternoon in early October Maggie Blackburn in an old shirt and slacks was shelving books in the living room of the Aspen Street house when Brendan Bauer, who had been out doing errands, entered the house through the kitchen and called out playfully, “Maggie—look what I’ve found!”

  He strode through the doorway bearing aloft, as if in triumph, Maggie’s bamboo birdcage, into which he’d placed two newly purchased canaries: a red-factor male and an American female with pale yellow feathers. The birds were excited, flying from perch to perch, emitting small sharp questioning cries. When Maggie saw the cage and the birds she stood staring and could not speak, and Brendan asked, anxiously, “You do like them, Maggie, don’t you? Aren’t they beautiful? And just like the ones you—lost?”

  The new house, into which Maggie Blackburn and Brendan Bauer had only just completed moving and in which they were not yet entirely settled, was no larger than Maggie’s former house in Forest Park, but its individual rooms seemed more capacious; the ceilings a few inches higher, the windows admitting more light. In the dining room area, which opened into the living room, a plate-glass window overlooked a tangled bed of dahlias and chrysanthemums; it faced south and west, flooded with autumnal sunshine.

  Brendan asked again if Maggie liked the canaries, and this time Maggie said, “Oh, yes.”

  The male canary was a brilliant flame-orange, the female a creamy yellow, shading, in her tail feathers, into white; they continued fluttering excitedly from perch to perch. Observing them, now from close up, Maggie was moved to think that nothing in her life ever changed except to shift, as if by subterranean stealth or grace, from one moment of wonder to the next.

  Brendan Bauer, his thin face glowing with pleasure, brought the bamboo cage to the dining room window, to position it. “Shall we hang it here, Maggie, or here?”

  “In the sun,” Maggie Blackburn said, “where it’s always been.”

  About the Author

  Joyce Carol Oates was born in Lockport, New York. After graduating from high school, she attended Syracuse University and then earned her master of arts from the University of Wisconsin–Madison before becoming a full-time writer. In 1963, she published her first book, the short story collection By the North Gate, and in 1964, when she was twenty-six years old, her first novel, With Shuddering Fall. Oates has written over forty works, many of which have won awards, including the National Book Award for them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, four Bram Stoker Awards, a World Fantasy Award, the National Humanities Medal, the Norman Mailer Prize for Lifetime Achievement, and the Stone Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement. Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), Blonde (2000), and Lovely, Dark, Deep (2014) were Pulitzer Prize finalists, and her 1996 novel We Were the Mulvaneys was a New York Times bestseller. Under the pen names Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly, she published eleven psychological suspense novels, including Snake Eyes (1992), Double Delight (1997), and Starr Bright Will Be with You Soon (1999). While writing and publishing books, Oates taught at the University of Windsor in Canada from 1968 to 1978, and then moved to New Jersey, where she currently teaches in Princeton University’s creative writing program as the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities. She also teaches creative writing courses at New York University, Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1990 by The Ontario Review />
  Cover design by Mauricio Díaz

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-4516-2

  This edition published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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