A Widow's Story (16 page)
Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
With his wife, the novelist Joyce Carol Oates, Mr. Smith founded
The Ontario Review
in 1974. Until his death, he was its editor; Ms. Oates was the associate editor. The journal, which appears twice yearly, has published the work of established writers — including Margaret Atwood, Donald Barthelme, Saul Bellow, Raymond Carver, Nadine Gordimer, Ted Hughes, Doris Lessing, Philip Roth, John Updike and Robert Penn Warren — as well as that of young writers.
Mr. Smith and Ms. Oates also founded and ran Ontario Review Books, a small independent publishing house that began in 1980. Among its titles are
Town Smokes
:
Stories
(1987), by Pinckney Benedict;
Selene of the Spirits
(1998), a novel by Melissa Pritchard;
The Identity Club
:
New and Selected Stories
(2005), by Richard Burgin; and reprints of many of Ms. Oates’s books.
Raymond Joseph Smith was born in Milwaukee on March 12, 1930. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, followed by a Ph.D. in English from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1960. He later taught at the University of Windsor in Ontario and at New York University before becoming a full-time editor and publisher.
He was the author of
Charles Churchill
(Twayne, 1977), a study of the 18th-century English poet and satirist.
In addition to Ms. Oates, whom he married in 1961, Mr. Smith is survived by a sister, Mary.
February 24, 2008.
To Edmund White
. . . lovely to have you visit. Please come back at any time to continue your so-fascinating memoir. In one of those pretentious flourishes of old you can note, at the end of the volume, the various places you’d written it in, for instance Florence, South of France, Honey Brook Drive.
Much love, & I’m glad that you could eat some of my accumulated food here—
Joyce
February 26, 2008.
To Susan Wolfson
Thank you for your kindness in interceding with Verizon!
At the center of grief, I think there are no words. I feel very mute, though hear myself chattering away . . . Tomorrow at school will be a great test.
I have gotten through the day!—revising my review—[for the New York Review]—trying to urge myself that it was worth it—is worth it . . . My days start at 6
A.M.
and go on—forever—like driving across Nebraska/Texas—just on and on, it’s amazing. Then they come to an abrupt stop at about midnight with a little white pill.
I have an array of very nice warm-Ray jackets for Ron to choose among.
Much love
Joyce
February 26, 2008.
To Jeanne Halpern
I so appreciate your love and concern. I am overwhelmed with so much happening, I need time to spend just grieving for Ray—just thinking about him, and remembering. So much has been happening of an exterior nature, I am panicked at the thought of losing him. Another “event”—traveling to New York—to modify my own will—is just too much right now. I am trying to resume some part of my old life—concentrating on my work . . . The thought of another appointment—in NYC—just about brought me to the brink of collapse. I’m sorry, I am very shaky. I am trying to concentrate on returning to classes tomorrow. I need to go more slowly . . . I’ve been agitated through much of the night, I feel that my frail “personality” could shatter into pieces. Though I am trying to keep a professional manner in and around the University.
Cherie was sleeping beside me this morning for a while . . . like old times’ sake. Both cats seem to blame me for Ray’s having disappeared.
Much love,
Joyce
February 27, 2008.
To Arthur Vanderbilt
Thank you for the Joan Didion memoir, which I’d already read—but will happily reread. I know that there is much melancholy wisdom here.
My “first day” back at school. It seemed . . . long. But Edmund was very kindly & affectionate, and things went well, over all. It is just so hard to return to this empty house where I risk being snubbed by our haughty cats.
Ray’s obituary was in the New York Times this morning. It took me forty minutes to open the paper . . . Ray loved you. We both recall so vividly how you came to our house bearing a lovely large bouquet (from your garden?) . . . At all our gatherings you have been the very compass of good sense/good humor/irony . . . Ray always felt that you had a “handle” on things . . .
Love
Joyce
February 28, 2008.
To Gary Mailman
Just one query: what would this lawyer do? You’d suggested a minimum of $10,000—for what? “Problems might mount”—what are the problems? Could my property be seized? What is the danger?
I am so confused and upset by this . . . I’d thought that you and Jeanne had concluded that New Jersey law wasn’t so complicated as Ohio and New York. I know that you know so much more than I do, but I am demoralized by this and exhausted . . . This is only one of so many things that have been striking me, I can’t even mourn for Ray. I am in a total state of exhaustion and agitation much of the day and night. Nothing ever seems to end. Always there is “more discussion.” Always some option. How long will this last? What does the law do for us, if such problems follow the execution of a seemingly legal document? Does the law just create situations to generate more law situations, thus more lawyers, and more fees? Any advice you can give will be so much appreciated!
I love you and trust you as a friend and am just so demoralized about this.
Joyce
February 28, 2008.
To Gary Mailman
I’ve had a time of meditation to think—try to think—more calmly about this. Now I see that you and Jeanne are right. I had conflated the two issues—(Ray’s will and a codicil to my will)—had thought the fee of $10,000 would be just for taking the will to court. But now, I see that you mean two quite distinct things which would be executed by the same lawyer. Jeanne has told me many things and perhaps she did tell me this but it was caught up in such a turmoil, I never grasped it. If this could be expedited soon, maybe I could (almost) sleep again . . .
Much love, see you soon,
Joyce
February 28, 2008.
To Elaine Pagels
I am often thinking of your early, terrible losses . . . How totally wounded you have been, which gives you a special empathy with people. Every so often a wave of pure, freezing horror sweeps over me—that Ray is gone, that I will never see him again. I have a fantasy about hurrying to the hospital room as I’d done so many times last week—and seeing him there, as he’d been in the bed, sitting up and reading.
It’s amazing to read in today’s New York Times of suicide rates rising for the middle-aged. How anyone could throw a life away, when life is so precious, and precarious, is astonishing.
Much love,
Joyce
February 29, 2008.
To Jeanne Halpern
Today I will be visiting with Ray’s cardiologist. I’m anxious already at what we might discuss . . . I know it’s wrong but I can’t help but think that this man might have saved Ray, that something more could have been done. Of course, he was nowhere near the Medical Center when Ray died at 12:50
A.M.
Love,
Joyce
February 29, 2008.
To Edmund White
. . . at last finished my review for Bob Silvers yesterday. For much of this I was like a dazed deer with her head trapped in wire, so many hours went into this short essay . . . If you can read the attachment, it’s at the break of a new section at the bottom of p. 6 that I was writing after Ray had died, the most numbed kind of “concentration” . . . late at night, staring at these words and at pages of notes for a review of a book virtually no one will read, nor even glance into, it’s so obscure. Still it was solace of a kind. Barbara Epstein kept working until a few days before she died. “What else is there but work?” she’d once said to me . . . At least the work isn’t just our teeming emotions but does cast out to other people.
Today, just a day of “tasks”—can’t even start to write anything new—a visit to the doctor who’d been Ray’s cardiologist. . . . It will be very strange, seeing Dr. H_ without Ray close by.
Much love,
Joyce
March 11, 2008.
To Ebet Dudley
. . . I remember your lovely party with such gratitude, it did seem to presage a happy ending; and the wonderful Valentine you’d created for Ray, which he never saw, is on display in our “party room” here though there is not likely to be a party for some time. . . .
What a hopeful evening that had seemed, for me at least! I wish that I could live it over again, in utter innocence. I remember what a cold night it was . . . and how unexpectedly social your dogs were, chatting up complete strangers with equanimity.
Much love,
Joyce
As these e-mail excerpts suggest
,
the memoir is a memoir of loss and grief but also perhaps more significantly a memoir of friendship.
It is to suggest that
,
for the widow
,
as for all who are grieving
,
there is no way to survive except through others. E-mail has replaced written letters—for some of us
,
it allows for communications which written letters and the telephone could never have accommodated.
How frantic the widow is
,
sending out these e-mails into the night! Often
,
in an effort to forestall the inevitable—confronting the empty house
,
glancing up to see a ghostly reflection in a window
,
preparing to deal with the night. And how wonderful her friends
,
replying—whose e-mails I have not represented here for they are the property of the senders whose privacy I would not wish violated.
Then suddenly, I am so angry.
I am so very very angry, I am furious.
I am sick with fury, like a wounded animal.
A kick of adrenaline to the heart, my heart begins thudding rapid and furious as a fist slamming against an obdurate surface—a locked door, a wall.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” I tell Dr. H
_
. “You don’t know the first thing about my husband and I think that I will go now. Good-bye!”
February 29
,
2008.
The final day of this interminable month.
Overcast sky, storm clouds dense as impacted bowels and yet: at intermittent and unpredictable intervals a blinding sun appears—a razor-sharp slashing sun—so the haze through which the widow moves with the uncertainty of a blind woman is occasionally pierced—the most extraordinary anger leaps forth like heat lightning.
Do not think that the widow is all damp dissolving tissue, watery eyes and quavering voice. Do not think that because the widow’s backbone has been broken, that the widow can’t lash out at her tormentors.
How healthy it would be, to be angry! To be an angry person, who blames others for her misfortune! Better to be angry, than to be depressed.
An angry person would never wish to hurt
herself.
For an angry person suicide is not an option.
But for some of us, anger is rarely possible. Anger is a high C our voices can’t reach. Always I’ve thought
To what purpose? Anger only makes things worse.
Indignation is the more civilized face of anger. Fury, the savage face.
On this day, I have an appointment with Ray’s cardiologist Dr. H
_
. In his chilly examination room an effervescent young nurse administers an EKG with the equanimity of a masseuse. You would not guess from the nurse’s friendly chatter that, in another few minutes, the most terrifying medical facts might be revealed of the patient. Lying on my back, partially undressed, I am conscious of my quickened heartbeat and of my strangely sunken stomach. I know that there are bruised dents beneath my eyes, my clothes feel loose on me, and I can’t stop shivering. A dull ache inside my head like a slowing pendulum. The nurse sticks cold little electrodes against my chest, my side, my leg, my arm like miniature sucking mouths all the while talking to me, smiling—of course, I am smiling at her—I am very good at exchanging those friendly quasi-humorous remarks that are the glue of our daily lives among others, making the most storm-tossed days navigable, tolerable.
With relief I think
She doesn’t know about Ray. She doesn’t know about me. Why should she know
,
why should I want her to know?
For the widow it is possible to be “happy”—to be perceived as “happy” by strangers—only in the interstices of our actual lives.
Not unlike a former athlete who, now aching in every bone, easily winded, stooped with cervical spine strain and overweight by thirty pounds, is nevertheless drawn to throw a few basketballs with young guys in a park—just a few!—and performs so well, for this brief interlude, the young guys are truly impressed. This is good!
My meeting with Dr. H
_
is awkward. I think that we are about to shake hands in greeting—but then, we don’t. (Is it customary to shake hands with one’s doctor? In my confusion, I can’t recall.) Dr. H
_
murmurs how sorry he is about Ray and moves on to speak of my EKG—that is “near-to-normal”—a fact that should bring relief (to me) since some years ago my heartbeat had been irregular from time to time; I’ve had attacks of tachycardia severe enough to warrant Ray taking me to the ER at the medical center. At the time of the last attack Dr. H
_
became my cardiologist, whom I see just once a year.
Dr. H
_
visited Ray at the hospital several times and spoke with us briefly, encouragingly. Dr. H
_
was not the “attending physician” and had nothing to do with the treatment Ray received for pneumonia of course.
Dr. H
_
had nothing to do with the outcome of Ray’s treatment. Of course.
Frowning Dr. H
_
takes my blood pressure, as I stare into a corner of the room. Blood pressure! The curiosity of this phenomenon strikes me for the first time.
“One hundred over sixty-eight—same as last time.”
Is this good? Or not so good? It is difficult for me to believe that anything about myself might be described as
same as last time.
Next, Dr. H
_
weighs me. I am not able to watch the scale as Dr. H
_
adjusts the little weight. In his concerned eyes, however, when I step off the scales, I am made to see the taboo-reflection I can’t bring myself to confront in the mirrors in our house.
There is a Jewish custom, I think—covering mirrors after a death in the family. How good if mirrors were permanently covered, or turned to the wall. Then, we would not be tempted to glance into them.
A gay male friend once told me, when his lover left him he’d been so devastated, he could not look into a mirror. When he had to see himself in some way, for instance when shaving, he covered parts of his face with his hand.
These stratagems for survival.
I needed a strategy by which to endure and go on—as who doesn’t?
(This line from Philip Roth’s new novel which I am reading in a bound galley, in the nest.
Exit Ghost
is the cryptic title.)
Consulting his notes in my folder, Dr. H
_
observes that I have lost eight pounds since my last visit in February 2007: my new weight is one hundred three pounds. I feel an urge to apologize but only just murmur something vague and conciliatory, as I would murmur if Dr. H
_
had said that I had a rare disease and only a few weeks to live.
Dr. H
_
observes that I am looking “strained”—“stressed”—“of course you’ve been through a terrible ordeal”—and suggests that he prescribe a sleeping pill for me.
For instance Ambien—“an effective drug, with minimal side effects.”
For a moment Dr. H
_
sounds soothing and hopeful as a TV commercial.
“To get you through these difficult weeks.”
Weeks!
I can’t envision anything shorter than a decade. My nocturnal life has become the Jersey Turnpike of insomnia.
But do I want a prescription for sleeping pills? No!
I am afraid of becoming addicted to sleeping pills. I think that I am deathly afraid.
I envision myself as
the very archetype of the drug addict
—raw trembling need, insomnia raging most nights like wildfire.
And of course I am alone. Who’s to know how many pills I take, how late I sleep?—my fantasy, which I have shared with no one, and will share with no one, is to take a pill to sleep, and when waking take another pill to sleep, and when waking take another pill to sleep, and when waking . . . how long this might continue, I have but mild curiosity.
Like a flashlight’s beam shining out into the night—you see the length of the beam. Beyond that, you can’t know.
Beyond that, better not to know.
It’s shocking then that my voice calmly replies yes thank you, Doctor.
For
of course
I want these pills. As one intent upon assembling a cache of powerful pills, I want all the pills I can get.
Dr. M
_
, our kindly family doctor, who prescribed antibiotics for Ray whenever Ray requested them, for a “bad cold” for instance, prescribed a tranquilizer for me—Lorazepam—which has a sudden sedative effect. Two evenings ago at the Halperns’ where I’d gone for dinner, having taken a single capsule before arriving, I’d begun to nod off, so abruptly stricken with torpor no one would trust me to drive home by myself . . .
Of course Dr. H
_
need not know that I have this prescription from kindly Dr. M
_
, as Dr. H
_
need not know that I already have a considerable cache of pills, a lethal quantity of pills, at home.
Many of these old pills were Ray’s. A few, mine.
The prescription for Lorazepam, I’d filled immediately. In the drugstore, I swallowed the first of the capsules.
I thought—
Am I doing this of my own volition
,
or because it’s expected of me? Is this the widow’s script? The start of the downward spiral.
Soon then a languid sensation set in. Where there’d been a hive of crazed and inarticulate emotions like something in a wind tunnel now there was a muffled sort of quiet. A Novocain-numbness. How good it felt, to be numb!
Numb
:
dumb.
I thought of the icy numbness creeping up Socrates’ legs. Plato doesn’t seem to comprehend that such numbness would be a solace, a vast relief, to the aged man. A way of eluding his captors. A way of assuring his dignity, his death.
Why am I thinking of Plato?—that fascist reactionary? Why am I thinking of Socrates?
The flight into the “life of the mind”—the denial of trauma.
A sledgehammer to the brain and the brain feebly tries to function as it is accustomed to functioning—making shrewd connections, establishing circuits that go nowhere, looping about in snarls. This is the human
strategy.
It’s a coincidence, purely—that my annual appointment with Dr. H
_
is scheduled for the week following my husband’s death.
I’d considered postponing the appointment for a routine cardiac exam. For why should I be concerned about my health, at such a time? I am contemptuous of my own health, my “well-being.” I think that I should be punished if only with a bad cold, a savage sore throat. Then thinking
If there is something wrong with my heart
,
I should know it. I have so very much to do
,
that must be done.
There are no obligations of the dead to the living. All obligations are of the living to the dead.
I am the
executrix
of my husband’s
estate.
What a harsh sound—
executrix.
A kind of
dominatrix.
Often it is said that death is “embarrassing” to doctors. It is said that doctors are reluctant to admit that death is a possibility for their patients as they are reluctant to draw up wills for themselves.
Especially, I should think, the death of a patient whom a doctor has been treating “successfully” is embarrassing—upsetting—to him. For Dr. H
_
had been Ray’s cardiologist for years—he’d prescribed medications to reduce Ray’s blood pressure and “thin” his blood and Ray had been given to know that these medications had been working very well.
Unlike many of our Princeton friends, Ray was not critical of Princeton medical care. He was not critical of any of his doctors whom in fact he liked, as he liked our Pennington dentist. Returning from an appointment with Dr. H
_
, Ray would say how much he liked Dr. H
_
, and trusted him.
Speaking of Ray now, as Dr. H
_
can’t avoid doing, Dr. H
_
seems genuinely sad, and genuinely surprised.
He’d known about the death, I had not had to tell him.
Our family doctor Dr. M
_
had been shocked, when I’d seen him a few days ago, and told him about Ray’s death. Dr. M
_
had not known about Ray’s hospitalization for pneumonia and was stunned to hear that Ray had died “so quickly.”
Dr. M
_
had protested that Ray was “in such good shape”—“so fit”—“watched his diet”—“took care of himself.”
It will not occur to the widow for months that no one would say to any widow
I’m not surprised. Of course your husband died. We all expected it.
Dr. H
_
is not alone in his office for this consultation. A young woman medical student is in attendance, taking notes and smiling at me. Now, she ceases smiling. She begins to look embarrassed, chagrined.
I am beginning to be struck by the fact that Dr. H
_
has said several times “I can’t imagine how this happened”—“I don’t understand how this happened”—as if he believes that I have come to him for an explanation, and that an explanation is due, from him. My impulse is to console him, as women are inclined to console men, all women, all men, in all circumstances without discretion; it must be a genetic component, like a reflexive empathy at the sight of an infant, or a reflexive recoiling at the sight of a snake; especially, the widow’s instinct, I am discovering, is to provide some sort of consolation, some sort of apology, or anyway sympathy, to those to whom the husband’s death has been a disturbing surprise. But I don’t say anything, in fact I am chewing my lower lip. I am discovering that I am angry.
I am sad, but I am
angry.
As he talks to me in his somewhat faltering way, like a man who has lost his mooring, Dr. H
_
is too discreet, or too circumspect, to speak more directly, or to suggest the slightest criticism of the staff at the Princeton Medical Center—for of course, Dr. H
_
is on this staff himself; yet he seems to be suggesting, in the repetition of key phrases—
Can’t imagine how this happened!—
that his patient Ray Smith possibly—probably?—hadn’t received the very best medical attention at the hospital, at that hour of the night.
Is this what Dr. H
_
is hinting? Or am I imagining it?
It’s chilling and horrible—outrageous—that the best physicians are not likely to be on duty at any hospital, at midnight; especially, a Sunday midnight; of course, there was a depleted crew in Telemetry, that night; a ragtag crew, perhaps; the equivalent of a
graveyard shift.
If Ray had required emergency care in the morning, which was Monday morning, when Dr. H
_
might have been on the premises, making his rounds, he might be alive now . . .
