Wonderland by Oates Joyce Carol

Author:Oates, Joyce Carol [Oates, Joyce Carol]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Modern Classics, Novel
ISBN: 9780307549617
Publisher: Modern Library
Published: 1971-01-31T02:00:00+00:00

5

And your family is …

Scattered.

Your entire family is scattered …?

My parents are dead.

I’m very sorry to hear that.

An automobile accident. It happened a long time ago. Around Christmas … the roads were icy.

Silence, during which questions rose like bubbles in Cady’s head: Jesse imagined he could see them. What, what did you say exactly? Your family is scattered or dead? Your parents are dead? How exactly did they die?

Jesse sat facing this man, an inheritor, a hopeful son-in-law, a kind of thief. He wanted to explain to Cady that those deaths were long ago, long ago. They did not matter now. How could they matter now? He wanted to erase all thought of those deaths from Cady’s mind, he wanted to seize hold of the man by his frail noble shoulders and shake him.… Dead? All dead? Where are they buried? Where do the dead go? Where are the dead at this moment, Jesse?

After a few moments Cady began to speak gently. He told Jesse about his wife’s death many years ago. Helene had been twelve at the time. Years, years had passed, and yet the death was somehow fresh, permanently fresh in their lives. Jesse stared at Cady’s hands; at his small, perfect, oval fingernails, which were well-tended. Those hands had outlived his wife’s hands. What did that mean? Where are the dead at this moment? Jesse began to feel lightheaded. Panicky. A copy of Time Magazine lay on a nearby table and Jesse could see the picture of Harry Truman on the cover. It lay at a slant toward him, the face distorted, shortened, the eyes hardly more than slits. A father’s face. Alive or dead?

Jesse sat with his knees pressed together, suddenly afraid he might say something wrong. Make a mistake. He might ask Cady where the dead went, and where they were all these years—he could almost hear his voice breaking into Cady’s voice, demanding to be told the truth—

An automobile accident. Christmastime. Long ago.

And you have no more relatives, Jesse?

No. Yes. They’re scattered. I can’t find them. Couldn’t find them.

Have you tried to find them?

No.

Why not?

They’re in the cemetery, waiting.

Do you go to visit them?

No, no!

Why not, Jesse?

“… so we were fortunate enough to have two sets of grandparents, very loving grandparents, for Helene.…” Cady was saying.

Jesse nodded gravely, sympathetically. What was this man talking about? It was hard for Jesse to follow. When he sat in Cady’s lecture he could follow everything the man said, no matter how complex it was; here, so close to him, as they talked of these soft-spoken matters, Jesse’s mind seemed to jump all over.

“… you said you lived with your grandfather, Jesse?”

“Yes.”

“How long was that?”

“A few years, until I went away to school … a few years … I don’t remember exactly.…”

My God, Jesse thought, how many questions can he ask! What does he want from me?… Benjamin Cady had won the Nobel Prize for his work in cerebellar physiology and always, always he was asking questions, staring at faces.

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