A Widow's Story by Oates Joyce Carol

Author:Oates, Joyce Carol [Oates, Joyce Carol]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Essays, Memoirs, Nonfiction
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-01-01T02:00:00+00:00

Chapter 46

In Motion!

Keep in motion!—here is salvation.

And so in these hallucinatory weeks following Ray’s death I am determined to impersonate “JCO” as flawlessly as in the cult film Blade Runner the race of replicants impersonated human beings. I am determined to impersonate “JCO” not merely because I have contracted to do so but because—a fact I am not likely to acknowledge in the Q & A sessions following my readings/lectures—it is the most effective way of eluding the basilisk.

And there is the stark blunt fact What difference does it make where you are, there is nowhere you will not be alone and all places are equidistant from death.

Cuyahoga County, Ohio. March 4, 2008. Amid a blizzard—banshee-howling winds—there’s an almost festive air—giddiness, gaiety—when the plane bearing sixty or so ghastly-pale passengers westward from Philadelphia in the way of a small boat on a stormy sea lands—slightly lurching, wobbly—but not disastrously—on the snow-whipped runway at the Cleveland airport.

I will try to feel good about this. I will try not to hear the mocking refrain running through my head There once was a ship, and she sailed upon the sea. And the name of our ship . . .

Somehow it has happened, against the advice of friends, and my longtime lecture-agent Janet Cosby, that I have come to Cleveland to give a talk—“The Writer’s (Secret) Life: Woundedness, Rejection, and Inspiration”—for a fund-raiser evening sponsored by the Cuyahoga County Public Library in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. My appearance isn’t at the library but in the Ohio Theater, a quaintly restored movie palace of the 1920s with a midnight-blue-felt sky twinkling with stars—vast space is suggested, magical transformations as in a children’s storybook—a cavernous space of one thousand seats—of which only about half will be filled, as a result of this terrible weather.

“Miss Oates! Thank you so much for coming! We heard about your husband, we’re so very sorry . . .”

My hosts are women: librarians. Very nice people.

Inevitably, everywhere—(yes, I can be quoted on this!)—the very nicest people you meet are likely to be librarians.

How hard this is, however—maintaining my poise as “JCO” when I am being addressed, so bluntly, as a woman whose husband has died—a “widow.”

How hard too, to change the subject—to deflect the subject—for I must not break down, not now. I know that these women mean well, of course they mean well, one or another of these women might in fact be widowed herself, but their words leave me stricken and unable to speak, at first. Accepting their condolences I must be courteous, gracious. I must understand that their solicitude is genuine, that they have no idea how desperately I would like not to be reminded of my “loss”—at this time, particularly.

By degrees then “JCO” returns, or resumes—the precarious moment has passed.

I am thinking of having a T-shirt printed:

Yes my husband died.

Yes I am very sad.

Yes you are kind to offer condolences.

Now can we change the subject?

With eight or ten others, mostly women, I am taken to dinner at

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.