Joyce Carol Oates

He walked to the window
stared down twenty stories to the street
gaseous and dizzy as a swamp
not visible at this height
but there had been a street down there
and he knew

It came with the apartment
and the guarded foyers and halls
and the doorman
holstered
beneath the uniform
the television split-screening
front and rear entrances

He knew it was all there
and he was here twenty stories above
the unsetteled swamp-mist
he knew the trucks bound for the bridge
were still passing near
he could feel them rumbling
in the soles of his feet
so he knew

the floor he walked on
was someone's ceiling
and it was all normal tonight
and countable
a two-year lease because
a desirable
with full view of
river-
a five-by-three balcony through the door is
$200 deposit
fully carpeted
self-defrosting refriger-
the balcony door is stuck but
He can stare twenty stories down
from the windowsill
watching the swamp smokes curl and thin
and the swamp lapping at the base
and the unpaid-for miracle
one inch at a time
...

the blood-smear across the knuckles:
painless, inexplicable.
once you discover it pain will begin,
in miniature.
never will you learn what caused it.
you forget it.

the telephone answered on the twelfth ring:
silence without breath, cunning, stark.
and then he hangs up.
and you stand there, alone.
then you forget.

and your father's inexplicable visit:
two days' notice, a ten-hour reckless drive.
rains, 80 mph winds, bad luck all the way,
traffic backed up, a broken windshield wiper,
and no stopping him.

clumsy handshakes.
How are—?
You seem—!
How good to —!
How long will—?
he must leave in the morning,
must get back.
a gas station two blocks away repairs the wiper.

did he sense death,
and so he raced to us?
did he already guess at his death
behind those nervous fond smiles,
the tumult of memories he had to bear?

nothing we know can explain his visit,
or the new, strange way he moved among us—
touching us, squeezing our arms, smiling.
the visit was an excuse.
the words that surrounded our touching were an excuse.
inexplicable, that the language we invent may be a means
to get us closer, to allow us to touch one another,
and then to back away.
...

At the podium
measured and grave as a metronome
the (white, male) poet with bald-
gleaming head broods in gnom-
ic syllables on the death
of 12-year-old (black, male) Tamir Rice
shot in a park
by a Cleveland police officer
claiming to believe
the boy's plastic pistol
was a "real gun"
like his own eager
to discharge and slay

while twelve feet away
at the edge
of the bright-lit stage
the (white, female) interpreter
signing for the deaf is stricken
with emotion —
horror, pity, disbelief —
outrage, sorrow —
young-woman face contorted
and eyes spilling tears
like Tamir Rice's mother
perhaps, or the sister
made to witness
the child's bleeding out
in the Cleveland park.
We stare
as the interpreter's fingers
pluck the poet's words out of the air
like bullets, break open stanzas
tight as conches with the deft
ferocity of a cormo-
rant and render gnome-speech
raw as hurt, as harm,
as human terror
wet-eyed and mouth-grimaced
in horror's perfect O.
...

didn't thank
didn't wave goodbye
didn't flutter the air with kisses
a mound of gifts unwrapped
bed unmade
no appetite

always elsewhere

though it was raining elsewhere
though strangers peopled the streets
though we at home slaved and
baked and wept and
hung ornaments
and perfumed the dark
did he marvel
did he thank

was he grateful did he know
was he human
was he there

always elsewhere:
didn't thank
didn't kiss
toothbrush stiffened with unuse
puppy whining in the hall
car battery dead
sweaters unraveled

was that human?

Went where?
...

Drowned together in his car in Lake Chippewa.
It was a bright cold starry night on Lake Chippewa.
Lake Chippewa was a "living" lake then,
though soon afterward it would choke and die.

In the bright cold morning after we could spy
them only through a patch of ice brushed clear of snow.
Scarcely three feet below,
they were oblivious of us.

Together beneath the ice in each other's arms.
Jean-Marie's head rested on Troy's shoulder.
Their hair had floated up and was frozen.
Their eyes were open in the perfect lucidity of death.

Calmly they sat upright. Not a breath!
It was 1967, there were no seat belts
to keep them apart. Beautiful
as mannequins in Slater Brothers' window.
Faces flawless, not a blemish.
Yet—you could believe
they might be breath-
ing, for some trick
of scintillate light revealed
tiny bubbles in the ice,
and a motion like a smile
in Jean-Marie's perfect face.

How far Troy'd driven the car onto Lake Chippewa
before the ice creaked, and cracked, and opened
like the parting of giant jaws—at least fifty feet!
This was a feat like his 7-foot-3.8-inch high jump.

In the briny snow you could see the car tracks
along the shore where in summer sand
we'd sprawl and soak up sun
in defiance of skin carcinomas to come. And you could see
how deftly he'd turned the wheel onto the ice
at just the right place.
And on the ice you could see
how he'd made the tires spin and grab
and Jean-Marie clutching his hand Oh oh oh!

The sinking would be silent, and slow.

Eastern edge of Lake Chippewa, shallower
than most of the lake but deep enough at twelve feet
to suck down Mr. Dupuy's Chevy
so all that was visible from shore
was the gaping ice wound.
And then in the starry night
a drop to -5 degrees Fahrenheit
and ice freezing over the sunken car.
Who would have guessed it, of Lake Chippewa!

Now in the morning through the swept ice
there's a shocking intimacy just below.
With our mittens we brush away powder snow.
With our boots we kick away ice chunks.
Lie flat and stare through the ice
Seeing Jean-Marie Schuter and Troy Dupuy
as we'd never seen them in life.
Our breaths steam in Sunday-morning light.

It will be something we must live with—
the couple do not care about our astonishment.
Perfect in love, and needing no one to applaud
as they'd been oblivious of our applause
at the Herkimer Junior High prom where they were
crowned Queen and King three years before.
(In Herkimer County, New York, you grew up fast.
The body matured, the brain lagged behind,
like the slowest runner on the track team
we'd applaud with affection mistaken for teen mockery.)

No one wanted to summon help just yet.
It was a dreamy silence above ice as below.
And the ice a shifting hue—silvery, ghost-gray, pale
blue—as the sky shifts overhead
like a frowning parent. What!
Lake Chippewa was where some of us went ice-fishing
with our grandfathers. Sometimes, we skated.
Summers there were speedboats, canoes. There'd been
drownings in Lake Chippewa we'd heard
but no one of ours.

Police, fire-truck, ambulance sirens would rend the air.
Strangers would shout at one another.
We'd be ordered back—off the ice of Lake Chippewa
that shone with beauty and onto the littered shore.
By harsh daylight made to see
Mr. Dupuy's 1963 Chevy
hooked like a great doomed fish.
All that privacy yanked upward pitiless
and streaming icy rivulets!
We knew it was wrong to disturb the frozen lovers
and make of them mere bodies.

Sweet-lethal embrace of Lake Chippewa
But no embrace can survive thawing.

One of us, Gordy Garrison, would write a song,
"Too Young to Marry But Not Too Young to Die"
(echo of Bill Monroe's "I Traced Her Little Footprints
in the Snow"), which he'd sing with his band the Raiders,
accompanying himself on the Little Martin guitar
he'd bought from his cousin Art Garrison
when Art enlisted in the U.S. Navy and for a while
it was all you'd hear at Herkimer High, where the Raiders
played for Friday-night dances in the gym, but then
we graduated and things changed and nothing more
came of Gordy's song or of the Raiders.

"TOO YOUNG TO MARRY BUT NOT TOO YOUNG TO DIE"
was the headline in the Herkimer Packet.
We scissored out the front-page article, kept it for decades in a
bedroom drawer.
(No one ever moves in Herkimer except
those who move away, and never come back.)
The clipping is yellowed, deeply creased,
and beginning to tear. When some of us stare
at the photos our hearts cease beating—oh, just a beat!

It was something we'd learned to live with—
there'd been no boy desperate to die with any of us.
We'd have accepted, probably—yes.
Deep breath, shuttered eyes—yes, Troy.
Secret kept yellowed and creased in the drawer,
though if you ask, laughingly we'd deny it.

We see Gordy sometimes, and his wife, June. Our grand-
children are friends. Hum Gordy's old song
to make Gordy blush a fierce apricot hue
but it seems cruel, we're all on blood
thinners now.
...

Mid-morning Monday she is staring
peaceful as the rain in that shallow back yard
she wears flannel bedroom slippers
she is sipping coffee
she is thinking—
—gazing at the weedy bumpy yard
at the faces beginning to take shape
in the wavy mud
in the linoleum
where floorboards assert themselves

Women whose lives are food
breaking eggs with care
scraping garbage from the plates
unpacking groceries hand over hand

Wednesday evening: he takes the cans out front
tough plastic with detachable lids
Thursday morning: the garbage truck whining at 7
Friday the shopping mall open till 9
bags of groceries unpacked
hand over certain hand

Men whose lives are money
time-and-a-half Saturdays
the lunchbag folded with care and brought back home
unfolded Monday morning

Women whose lives are food
because they are not punch-carded
because they are unclocked
sighing glad to be alone
staring into the yard, mid-morning
mid-week
by mid-afternoon everything is forgotten

There are long evenings
panel discussions on abortions, fashions, meaningful work
there are love scenes where people mouth passions
sprightly, handsome, silly, manic
in close-ups revealed ageless
the women whose lives are food
the men whose lives are money
fidget as these strangers embrace and weep and mis-
understand and forgive and die and weep and embrace
and the viewers stare and fidget and sigh and
begin yawning around 10:30
never made it past midnight, even on Saturdays,
watching their braven selves perform

Where are the promised revelations?
Why have they been shown so many times?
Long-limbed children a thousand miles to the west
hitch-hiking in spring, burnt bronze in summer
thumbs nagging
eyes pleading
Give us a ride, huh? Give us a ride?

and when they return nothing is changed
the linoleum looks older
the Hawaiian Chicken is new
the girls wash their hair more often
the boys skip over the puddles
in the GM parking lot
no one eyes them with envy

their mothers stoop
the oven doors settle with a thump
the dishes are rinsed and stacked and
by mid-morning the house is quiet
it is raining out back
or not raining
the relief of emptiness rains
simple, terrible, routine
at peace
...