“Well!—‘Dad.’ How cozy.”

  In his grip the baguette splintered, ingredients spilled out. Kit’s mouth was greasy and the tart Belgian beer was causing him to belch. There came a stir of nausea in the pit of his belly, he had to think how wrong this was, how fucked-up, why was he here? why with her? eating when he wasn’t hungry, drinking beer when he hated the taste, and her knee nudging his, as if by accident; and her Cutty Sark * 135

  black silk shirt falling open at the throat, a shirt lacking buttons, a shirt that was a kind of wraparound garment fastened shut with a tie, and in the hollow between her breasts a crimson-orchid tattoo you might mistake for a birthmark. Kit had told himself he would not see her again. He didn’t want this, whatever it was. Yet, he was here. He was in terror that she would telephone the school and say My son will be staying with me tonight, don’t expect him back even tomorrow. We are going on a family trip on the Quinebaug River!

  Unexpectedly Kit’s mother was saying that she’d made an appointment to see the headmaster of his school the next afternoon, she hoped that Kit wouldn’t mind. She would stay another day, perhaps. She would make appointments to see all of Kit’s teachers for she was concerned for his welfare, she said. She had not heard very much that was encouraging about the New London Academy, a place for students who’d had to leave other schools, a place for the

  “learning disabled,” she’d spoken to Kit’s father questioning his decision to send Kit here instead of Andover, Exeter, Groton—“It’s heartbreaking to see the exit sign for Groton, and not be going there to see my son. Why couldn’t your father have gotten you into Groton!”

  Kit stammered that he’d applied late, to transfer. Groton wouldn’t have considered his application.

  “What about next year, then? Is your father looking ahead to next year?”

  “My friends are here, Mom. I—I have friends here.”

  Kit’s mother stared. Her dark-maroon mouth puckered in disdain. “Friends here? How can you have friends here? You’ve only just transferred here.”

  Kit opened his mouth to speak, but could not. His heart was beating hard and pulses beat in his temples and he could not bring himself to look at his mother. He’d made a mess of the sandwich, baguette-crumbs and bits of shredded lettuce on the carpet beneath his feet. Not wanting to reach over for a napkin, to lean close to his mother, he’d wiped his hands on his trousers and on the bro-caded sofa.

  136 * joyce carol oates

  After a moment Kit’s mother said, in a softer voice, “Your behavior is to spite me, is it? Yours, and your father’s? But why? Why are you angry with me? What I wrote—my memoir—had nothing to do with either of you. My life as a girl, long before you were born. You never knew Oliver, he had nothing to do with you.”

  Truly she seemed perplexed. Pressing the heel of a hand against her breast, as if she’d been wounded there, a random strike of Kit’s.

  Stunned and silent Kit could not reply. He was fearful of her touching him. She had drained her glass of Cutty Sark. Out of a decanter she poured more whiskey into her glass, and drank. In her wayward mood she might be tender, or accusing; she might turn on him suddenly, or she might begin to cry. He did not trust her. He could not predict her. He hated it that she was wearing another of her short skirts, of some satiny-cashmere black material, that fi tted her much too tightly. It had slid past her knees, up her thighs tightly encased in the sheer smoke-colored fabric. The long silvery hair was disheveled, where a tortoiseshell comb had come loose.

  There was a flush in the ivory-pale face across her cheeks, a thickening at her jawline. Though Quincy was thin as an anorexic girl in her shoulders and arms she was fleshier elsewhere, her thighs, legs and ankles, as if gravity were tugging her down, inexorably.

  The black silk shirt had fallen open to reveal a small fl accid sallow-skinned breast cupped in a black lace brassiere. Kit wanted to yank the shirt shut.

  Sensing Kit’s disapproving eyes on her, Quincy shut her own eyes and recited: “ ‘The writer writes his letter to the world and when the world replies it is like the sorcerer’s apprentice. She cannot control what she has summoned.’ ” She paused. She was breathing quickly. When Kit made no reply she said, opening her eyes:

  “The words of Anaïs Nin. Whom the world persisted in misunderstanding, too.”

  Kit laughed hoarsely. Kit took a clumsy swig from the beer bottle, and belched.

  With unexpected belligerence he said: “So you’re saying, Cutty Sark * 137

  ‘Quin-cy,’ no one can be blamed for anything? It’s no fault of anybody’s, what happens?”

  “In a way, no.” Quincy spoke slowly not wanting to slur her words. “For we can’t predict.”

  Again Kit laughed. It was the tart Belgian beer speaking.

  “Know what, Mom?—I don’t like you. ‘Quincy’—don’t like. No fault of anybody’s, is it? See, if you weren’t my . . .” Badly wanting to say my fucking mother.

  “If I weren’t your mother, Kit darling, know what?—you would not exist. ‘Kit Smartt’ who imagines he’s so smart exists solely by way of ‘Quincy Smartt.’ ” Gaily she laughed, clapping her beringed hands together like a malicious child.

  Kit opened his mouth to rebuke this but could not. Had to concede, Quincy was right.

  Kit heaved himself to his feet. His head swam, he liked the sensation. He’d come out of the woman’s cunt, that was the biological bottom line. That could not be rebuked. What you despised about Quincy Smartt was, she was so often right.

  “ ‘Cunt-cunning.’ ”

  Kit made his way to the bathoom on unsteady feet. Collided with a chair, he knocked out of his way. She was calling after him sharply, “Kit? What did you say?” but inside the headachey-bright bathroom Kit fumbled to unzip himself, urinating into the sparkling peach-colored porcelain toilet bowl not very accurately and with such urgency he hadn’t had time to completely shut the door.

  It was the Belgian beer he’d acquired a taste for, that had fl ushed through his kidneys. In the enormous mirror Kit’s teeth were bared in an angry-dog smile. Unless it was an abashed-boy smile.

  His face seemed to him painfully ugly and his skin was fl ushed and mottled and his eyes unexpectedly bloodshot, glassy-bright. At the back of his skull a beer-buzz like hornets and behind his eyes a weird numb sensation as if he’d been part-lobotomized and liked it. While he was pissing something edged sideways into his head like a lateral play on the lacrosse fi eld, he’d lunged to net the ball but somehow the ball whipped away from him rushing along the 138 * joyce carol oates

  grassy field like something alive . . . He recalled an interview he’d seen on late-night cable TV alone in the floor lounge and there was Quincy Smartt being interviewed by a man with dyed-dark hair and droopy cartoon mustache acknowledging yes, she’d been a

  “deeply disturbed and perverse” girl at the time of the “incest” but that didn’t excuse her behavior, of course. Because she’d been older than her twelve-year- old brother by three crucial years and she’d set out deliberately to seduce and corrupt him knowing that he was

  “emotionally unstable”—“terrified of being touched.” In a grave sympathetic voice the interviewer asked how long had the affair with her brother lasted, and Quincy said, “Five years, but intermittently. I went away to boarding school when our parents were divorced, and Oliver went away, but when we returned home at breaks and summer vacations we started again, it wasn’t just revenge on my part. I loved my brother, and he loved me. It was a solace to us, our love.” The interviewer asked what did Quincy’s family think of Memoir of a Lost Time and Quincy said, “You would have to ask them, I think,” as if this were an answer she’d given many times before; and the interviewer said, “But your brother actually had a breakdown, and committed suicide?” with an air of unscripted surprise, and Quincy said, more slowly now, wiping at her eyes, “Yes, Oliver killed himself. It was hushed up in the family of course but he’d died a hideous—calculated—death drinking Dra-no and burning out his insides. But our closeness”—uttered with the delicacy of one lifting a tiny sliver out of a wound with a tweezers—“was a solace for him, I will always believe that. Oliver was a strange unhappy boy, part autistic, I think. He had ‘eating disorders’ and ‘sleep disorders’ and a phobia about being touched but at the same time he was desperately lonely and wanted to be touched. Our intimacy was good for him,” and the interviewer said, with a skeptical smile, “ ‘Good for him’—if he committed suicide?” and Quincy said defiantly, “Well, no one ever touched Oliver, much. He was this ‘musical prodigy’ paralyzed by phobias, he had a kind of curvature of the spine, I was the only one who cared for him.”

  Cutty Sark * 139

  A sharp knock on the bathroom door, that was partly ajar. She was asking if Kit was all right and Kit told her to go away, he’d be out in a minute.

  Fumbling now to zip himself up. Fumbling to fl ush the toilet.

  Unsteady and weaving Quincy pushed into the bathroom in her stocking feet, shorter than Kit would have imagined her. The ivory-white cosmetic mask was smudged, the eyes leaking moisture. “Kit? Kit? Darling.” She came to him, and held him. Captur-ing him in her thin strong arms that put Kit in mind of a spider-crab’s legs, a sea-creature that would be monstrous on land.

  Kit stood very still. Kit did not dare to breathe. Though wanting badly to raise his elbows against her, body-check her with all of his weight and thrust her from him. She had hold of his head, clutching at his damp hair. She was clutching him to her, sobbing. It was a rapturous sobbing, a kind of laughter. She was whispering she’d never loved anyone until him. She had married his father without loving him and other men she’d lived with, and had believed she’d loved, she had not. She had only loved him: “You are Oliver returned to me but more beautiful than Oliver, far more beautiful.

  And this time chastely, a chaste love.” Her breath smelled strongly of whiskey. Kit was revulsed by her but could not summon the strength to push her away. A wave of darkness rose in him, like something foul, choking. He would burst, he could not breathe.

  He said, “ ‘Oliver’—was my age when he killed himself—wasn’t he—” and Quincy said, “Please don’t speak of that, Kit! That was years ago, before you were born. All that was years ago and we are now.”

  His first blow struck her on the shoulder. It was not a hard blow but Quincy cried out in pain and astonishment and stumbled away from him.

  He tore at the black silk shirt. He was tearing at the lacy black brassiere. He saw that a strap had left a reddened mark on her shoulder. He gripped her bony shoulders and shook her. He was speaking to her but had no idea what he was saying nor would he recall afterward what she said, what words she uttered, to him. She 140 * joyce carol oates

  struck at him, clawed at him. Though he seemed to know that she wanted him to hurt her yet she was clawing at him, and screaming at him. He shoved her away and she stumbled backward against a dazzling-white tiled wall. He backed away from her, panting. His hands were uplifted, he wanted her to see that he was leaving: wasn’t going to hurt her: wasn’t going to strangle her, or smash her skull against the wall: why was she continuing to scream, hysterical now, furious now calling “Help! help! help!” like a crazed woman in terror of being killed though she could see that Kit was harmless now, Kit was leaving, not entirely wakened from his beery trance but knowing he had to run away, with the presence of mind to grab at his down jacket that lay flung across a chair beside the shimmering-black sable coat, beautiful sable coat she’d fl ung down partly on top of Kit’s grungy jacket; as his mother continued to scream behind him he found himself running along a corridor, through a door marked fire exit stairs and down the stairs taking the steep antiquated steps two at a time, and then he was at the rear fire exit and a white-uniformed man carrying a tray gaped at him with the comical surprise of a TV character who has walked into a dangerous scene and Kit pushed past him, Kit might have shoved him or even struck him backhanded in his need to escape, the tray fell to the floor with a deafening clatter, blood sprang from the man’s nose in the instant that Kit pushed out of the door and found himself outside, in the fresh cold air, what a relief to be outside in this cold damp air, walking swiftly from the inn whose name he could not have said in the exigency of the moment, in a parking lot and gravel crunching beneath his feet. His breath was steaming, his face pounded with blood. She’d stabbed him with her sharp fingernails, from a half-dozen little wounds blood oozed stinging. She would report him, he knew. She would summon police. I want to report an assault she would tell them making an effort to speak calmly and not hysterically or drunkenly and in this way convincingly The assailant is my own son. Though in the next instant Kit was forgetting this, he would forget most of what he’d done in the bathroom uncertain if he’d torn off all of his mother’s clothes, Cutty Sark * 141

  or only the black silk shirt. And the lacy black brassiere, that so offended him.

  Adrenaline pumped in his veins, he was excited, dangerous. He liked the feeling. There was simplicity here, forward-motion. He was not running back-and-forth, side-to-side, in cramped circles on a playing field being struck at by other plunging figures, he was running and sliding down an embankment he’d never seen before, yet opened before him like magic, and felt right. Near-dark now, a faint quarter moon shone overhead like a winking eye. Somehow he’d left his jacket behind after all, dropped his jacket at the fire exit door. He wasn’t cold but he seemed to be shivering, his teeth chattering. The sprawling old house out of which he’d run had been built at the top of a hill and this hill dropped to the river that had no name Kit could recall, along this river there was an over-grown gravel path he could follow by moonlight. On the grass close by were ugly unwieldy wooden chairs, picnic tables hunched like malevolent figures in the shadows. Quickly it came to Kit, he could hide beneath one of these. Or—there was a bridge a quarter mile away, on the river—he could wade out into the river and hide beneath the bridge for often beneath bridges there are mounds of concrete rubble, the water isn’t deep. This he knew: he could not return to his residence hall, just yet. For he would be apprehended at school. The dorm proctor would accompany the police offi cers to his room, he knew. And so he’d suddenly changed course not headed for the bridge but ascending the embankment, toward the highway. He would follow the highway that led to—was it Norwich?—in the underbrush beside the highway. Except the underbrush was too thick, littered with papers and debris, thorns cut at his legs and exposed hands. He ran, on the shoulder of the highway. He was short of breath, his heart ached inside his ribs, he began to walk, he was walking and panting and it seemed to be later, as headlights of oncoming vehicles swung onto him shrewdly he hid in the underbrush like a wild creature. All this while his head was filled with thoughts rapid as heat lightning and yet these thoughts were not coherent and could not help him. He was like 142 * joyce carol oates

  one struggling with a language he’d never heard before. His gut was clenched in nausea. He’d stuffed himself with greasy food, he’d swigged bottles of beer. He was dazed and light-headed and fighting nausea. He had not the right footwear for a long run on pavement. He yearned to confide in his roommate Felix Gervais.

  How he yearned for Felix Gervais to squeeze his arm above the elbow as a few rare times Gervais had done after Kit had played passably well on the lacrosse field and now Gervais would assure him frowning and wishing him well It’s cool, Smartt. You’re going to be all right. Though it was a lie, yet Gervais would lie for Kit’s sake. This was all Kit wanted, that Gervais lie for his sake. He was stumbling now, on the shoulder of the highway. His damned face bled from her nails. One of her nails had nicked his right eye, that was fl ooded now with tears. The cold air stung his wet face. When vehicles swept past him from behind he had not the strength to avoid them but stood hunched and stiff until they were gone. No one slowed to offer help though Kit was wearing his lacrosse jersey in the school color maroon. In the near distance there was a siren, he panicked and ran, slipping and stumbling down an embankment. Branches struck at him, he was bleeding from his mouth. Vehicles braked to a stop on the road. A spotlight swung onto him, he could not escape. He was crawling, he could not escape. Uniformed offi cers shouted at him. Strangers approached him, sliding down the embankment. There were shouts, commands. He saw that they were aiming guns at him. Never would he forget, uniformed men, adults, had aimed guns at him. He was being instructed to lie down, to extend his hands so that they could be seen. Blindly he scrambled to his feet, he was desperate to escape. A uniformed offi cer who could not have been more than a few years older than Kit seized his arm and swiftly and blindly Kit turned to strike at him and in that instant he seemed to be lifted into the air, struck by more than one officer and lifted and thrown and wrestled to the ground as if at 130 pounds Kit Smartt offered no more resistance than a young child. He struck the ground face-first. His breath was struck from him. There came a knee against the small of his back hard enough Cutty Sark * 143

  to snap his spine, and there came a gloved hand against the nape of his neck, and his face that was raw and torn was forced into the dirt.

  His arms were yanked behind him, his wrists tightly cuffed so that pain shot through his arms to his shoulders. Wildly his young heart beat to contain his terror. His bladder seemed to split in two, he’d wetted himself. The police officers were shouting at him, these were deafening commands he could not obey. There were drawn guns, Kit knew. Badly Kit wanted the guns to be fired at him so that he could die but he had not that power, he had lost all his strength.

  Yet his arms were being pushed up higher, the pain was excruciating. They wanted him to cry, he thought. He would not.

  Landfi ll

  Tioga County landfill is where Hector, Jr. is found. “Remains” buried in rubble, trash, raw garbage. Battered and badly decomposed and mouth filled with trash. Couldn’t have protested if he’d been alive, buried in trash. Overhead, shrieking birds. In the vast landfill, dump trucks and bulldozers and a search team from the Tioga County Sheriff ’s Department in protective uniforms. Three weeks missing, in all the newspapers and TV. Most of his teeth broken at the roots but those that remain are sufficient to identify Hector Campos, Jr. of Southfi eld, Michigan.