Dear Husband by Joyce Carol Oates

Author:Joyce Carol Oates [Oates, Joyce Carol]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2011-05-14T19:26:01+00:00

“What’s a ‘misunderstanding’?”

“I said, I don’t care to discuss it now.”

“Fuck that! You tell me, Mom.”

She winced. She pushed past him. She was headed for the stairs, J.J. wanted to pull at her arm but dared not touch her.

“You’re protecting him? That fucker? That tried to fuck us both? That—son of a bitch?”

Though sober J. J. was feeling stoned, suddenly. A roaring in his ears like a cocaine rush. But it was a bad trip, an evil dose. Im-purities in the high, like sand in his teeth. Air-bubbles in an artery, rushing to the heart to kill it with an embolism.

There was this thing they’d done. They’d done together. He never thought of her now and even her name was not a name he wished to recall and he could not have said if she was alive yet, or had died and he’d been informed but had not wished to pro cess the information at just that time. You could ruin a high, pro cessing the wrong information. You could ruin the last pure high of your life.

She’d been older than J.J. All his best girls had been older. Boot-ing she’d called it. She’d taught him, though he’d never been able to boot with her skill. Like a nurse she’d been. Maybe in fact she had been a nurse. Carefully you draw the blood back up into the sy-ringe once the heroin is partially injected in the vein, back and forth like the sweetest sex-teasing to prolong and intensify the high she’d taught him, done it to him how many times and he’d never forget, there was no high like it.

Vigilante * 177

He’d been crazy for her, he remembered. Not her name but that, he remembered.

Now the sex he had wasn’t like sex but something else. Like an old silent black-and-white movie. It was sex, but not sex. It was the kind of sex that, if your cell phone rang, you’d answer.

Howling wind! He loved it, high in the old oaks.

After she’d gone to bed and the house was darkened. After he’d been released knowing she had to be asleep. You can sense it, going off Mom’s radar. That good feeling.

Too restless to stay indoors. The grease-smell of turkey, con-gealing gravy. At the table he’d wanted to laugh in all their faces.

He’d wanted to tell them Not a one of you knows. All of you dead and not a clue.

By midnight he was cruising the strip. Beyond the Miracle Mall at the intersection with I-84. Some of the landmarks were changed but there was Friday’s, and there was Galloway’s Go-Go, and there was the Truck Stop, and there was the snow-swept desolation of the vast parking lot beside the shuttered Kmart where they’d smoked dope, and later “ice”—that had scared J.J. Quinlan, it was a high that blew off the top of his skull.

He’d never tried ice again, after that first time. Tonight he scored just a few nickel-bags of dope, high-school stuff. His hands shook, even so. His mouth had gone dry with anticipation.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.