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Chapters (62)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. I.
  5. 1
  6. 2
  7. 3
  8. 4
  9. 5
  10. 6
  11. 7
  12. II.
  13. 1
  14. 2
  15. 3
  16. 4
  17. 5
  18. 6
  19. 7
  20. 8
  21. 9
  22. 10
  23. III.
  24. 1
  25. 2
  26. 3
  27. 4
  28. 5
  29. 6
  30. 7
  31. 8
  32. 9
  33. IV.
  34. 1
  35. 2
  36. 3
  37. 4
  38. 5
  39. 6
  40. 7
  41. 8
  42. 9
  43. 10
  44. 11
  45. 12
  46. 13
  47. 14
  48. 15
  49. 16
  50. 17
  51. 18
  52. 19
  53. 20
  54. 21
  55. 22
  56. 23
  57. 24
  58. 25
  59. 26
  60. About the Author
  61. Also by Joyce Carol Oates
  62. About the Publisher

So she didn’t dare answer the phone. Wouldn’t have dared, even if she could make it to the phone. For in her current state it was impossible to keep a note of self-pity out of her voice. For in her current state she cared for only one telephone call, one voice, which of course—being no fool, even with a temperature of 103°—she knew she would not hear.

Her hair, she discovered, had become coarse and greasy. Her golden hair, so much admired!—but when she washed it, last time she washed it, how long ago was that, she had been frightened that so many hairs came out, sticking to her breasts, her belly, her legs, caught in the shower drain, a sickening sight. Perhaps it was a revelation but she needed no revelations, her fever darted and leapt and played about the ceiling, dazzled the insides of her eyelids, she had enough of revelations. Hairs in the shower and in the sink: Harold’s, discovered by chance: and she had cleaned them out, deftly, not thinking a great deal about it, that was simply something she’d done, she was always to be observed doing something after all, every minute of every hour of every year, why not clean a husband’s hairs out of a sink, the marriage would not last forever.

Had she the energy she might have turned Sheila’s watercolor to the wall, or tossed it into the closet, or under the bed. Had she the energy she might have turned her mirrors to the wall, to spare herself their special revelation. It was particularly unnerving to see herself in the cabinet mirror in the bathroom—that sallow ravaged face, those puffed eyes, a dull-normal glaze over all—she, the golden girl!—now staggering and puking and damned grateful to have a place, a private place, in which to puke out her guts: which was the point, the sole point, wasn’t it.

22

In that bathroom, in the medicine cabinet, on the lowermost shelf amidst a stained toothbrush, and a tweezers, and a cuticle scissors, there is Monica’s safety razor lying flat on a bit of dirty Kleenex.

Which vision never fails to bring a rush of tears to her eyes, for reasons she could not have named.

Which vision never fails to make her pulses leap, in a delirium of relief and expectation.

23