Patricide (14 page)

 

Please enjoy this excerpt from Joyce Carol Oates's novel
Mudwoman
,
available now from Ecco

Mudgirl is a child abandoned by her mother in the silty flats of the Black Snake River. Cast aside, Mudgirl survives by an accident of fate—or destiny. After her rescue, the well-meaning couple who adopt Mudgirl quarantine her poisonous history behind the barrier of their middle-class values, seemingly sealing it off forever. But the bulwark of the present proves surprisingly vulnerable to the agents of the past.

Meredith “M.R.” Neukirchen is the first woman president of an Ivy League university. Her commitment to her career and moral fervor for her role are all-consuming. Involved with a secret lover whose feelings for her are teasingly undefined, and concerned with the intensifying crisis of the American political climate as the United States edges toward war with Iraq, M.R. is confronted with challenges to her leadership which test her in ways she could not have anticipated. The fierce idealism and intelligence that delivered her from a more conventional life in her upstate New York hometown now threaten to undo her.

A reckless trip upstate thrusts M.R. Neukirchen into an unexpected psychic collision with Mudgirl and the life M.R. believes she has left behind. A powerful exploration of the enduring claims of the past,
Mudwoman
is at once a psychic ghost story and an intimate portrait of a woman cracking the glass ceiling at enormous personal cost, which explores the tension between childhood and adulthood, the real and the imagined, and the “public” and “private” in the life of a highly complex contemporary woman.

 

Excerpt from
Mudwoman

I
n fact there had been inhabitants along the Mill Run Road, and not too long ago—an abandoned house, set back in a field like a gaunt and etiolated elder; a Sunoco station amid a junked-car lot, that appeared to be closed; and an adjoining café where a faded sign rattled in the wind—
BLACK
RIVER
CAFÉ.

Both the Sunoco station and the café were boarded up. Just outside the café was a pickup truck shorn of wheels. M.R. might have turned into the parking lot here but—so strangely—found herself continuing forward as if drawn by an irresistible momentum.

She was smiling—was she? Her brain, ordinarily so active, hyperactive as a hive of shaken hornets, was struck blank in anticipation.

In hilly countryside, foothills and densely wooded mountains, you can see the sky only in patches—M.R. had glimpses of a vague blurred blue and twists of cloud like soiled bandages. She was driving in odd rushes and jolts pressing her foot on the gas pedal and releasing it—she was hoping not to be surprised by whatever lay ahead and yet, she was surprised—shocked: “Oh God!”

For there was a child lying at the side of the road—a small figure lying at the side of the road broken, discarded. The Toyota veered, plunged off the road into a ditch.

Unthinking M.R. turned the wheel to avoid the child. There came a sickening thud, the jolt of the vehicle at a sharp angle in the ditch—the front left wheel and the rear left wheel.

So quickly it had happened! M.R.'s heart lurched in her chest. She fumbled to open the door, and to extract herself from the seat belt. The car engine was still on—a violent peeping had begun. She'd thought it had been a child at the roadside but of course—she saw now—it was a doll.

Mill Run Road. Once, there must have been a mill of some sort in this vicinity. Now, all was wilderness. Or had reverted to wilderness. The road was a sort of open landfill used for dumping—in the ditch was a mangled and filthy mattress, a refrigerator with a door agape like a mouth, broken plastic toys, a man's boot.

Grunting with effort M.R. managed to climb—to crawl—out of the Toyota. Then she had to lean back inside, to turn off the ignition—a wild thought came to her, the car might explode. Her fingers fumbled the keys—the keys fell onto the car floor.

She saw—it wasn't a doll either at the roadside, only just a child's clothing stiff with filth. A faded-pink sweater and on its front tiny embroidered roses.

And a child's sneaker. So small!

Tangled with the child's sweater was something white, cotton—underpants?—stiff with mud, stained. And socks, white cotton socks.

And in the underbrush nearby the remains of a kitchen table with a simulated-maple Formica top. Rural America, filling up with trash.

An entire household dumped out on the Mill Run Road! Not a happy story.

M.R. stooped to inspect the refrigerator. Of course it was empty—the shelves were rusted, badly battered. There was a smell. A sensation of such unease—oppression—came over her, she had to turn away.

[ . . . ]

This side of the Black Snake River were stretches of marshland, mudflats. She'd been smelling mud. You could see that the river often overran its banks here. There was a harsh brackish smell as of rancid water and rotted things.

Amid the mudflats was a sort of peninsula, a spit of land raised about three feet, very likely man-made, like a dam; M.R. climbed up onto it. She was a strong woman, her legs and thighs were hard with muscle beneath the soft, just slightly flabby female flesh; she made an effort to swim, hike, run, walk—she “worked out” in the University gym; still, she quickly became breathless, panting. For there was something very oppressive about this place—the acres of mudflats, the smell.

Even on raised ground she was walking in mud—her nice shoes, mudsplattered.

Her feet were wet.

She thought
I
must
turn
back.
As
soon
as
I
can.

She thought
I
will
know
what
to
do—this
can
be
made
right.

Staring at her watch trying to calculate but her mind wasn't working with its usual efficiency. And her eyes—was something wrong with her eyes?

[ . . . ]

Stress, overwork the doctor had told her. Hours at the computer and when she glanced up her vision was distorted and she had to blink, squint to bring the world into some sort of focus.

How faraway that world—there could be no direct route to that world, from the Mill Run Road.

A
crouched
figure.
Bearded
face,
astonished
eyes.
Slung
over
his
shoulder
a
half-dozen
animal
traps.
With
a
gloved
hand
prodding
at—whatever
it
was
in
the
mud.

“Hello? Is someone . . . ?”

She was making her way along the edge of a makeshift dam. It was a dam comprised of boulders and rocks and it had acquired over the years a sort of mortar of broken and rotted tree limbs and even animal carcasses and skeletons. Everywhere the mudflats stretched, everywhere cattails and rushes grew in profusion. There were trees choked with vines. Dead trees, hollow tree-trunks. The pond was covered in algae bright-green as neon that looked as if it were quivering with microscopic life and where the water was clear the pebble-sky was reflected like darting eyes. She was staring at the farther shore where she'd seen something move—she thought she'd seen something move. A flurry of dragonflies, flash of birds' wings. Bursts of autumn foliage like strokes of paint and deciduous trees looking flat as cutouts. She waited and saw nothing. And in the mudflats stretching on all sides nothing except cattails, rushes stirred by the wind.

She was thinking of something her (secret) lover had once said—
There
is
no
truth
except
perspective.
There
are
no
truths
except
relations.
She had seemed to know what he'd meant at the time—he'd meant something matter-of-fact yet intimate, even sexual; she was quick to agree with whatever her lover said in the hope that someday, sometime she would see how self-evident it was and how crucial for her to have agreed at the time.

Thinking
There
is
a
position,
a
perspective
here.
This
spit
of
land
upon
which
I
can
walk,
stand;
from
which
I
can
see
that
I
am
already
returned
to
my
other
life,
I
have
not
been
harmed
and
will
have
begun
to
forget.

Thinking
This
is
all
past,
in
some
future
time.
I
will
look
back,
I
will
have
walked
right
out
of
it.
I
will
have
begun
to
forget.

[ . . . ]

At the end of the peninsula there was—nothing. Mudflats, desiccated trees. In the Adirondacks, acid rain had been falling for years—parts of the vast forest were dying.

“Hello?”

Strange to be calling out when clearly no one was there to hear. M.R.'s uplifted hand in a ghost-greeting.

He'd been a trapper—the bearded man. Hauling cruel-jawed iron traps over his shoulder. Muskrats, rabbits. Squirrels. His prey was small furry creatures. Hideous deaths in the iron traps, you did not want to think about it.

Hey!
Little
girl—?

She turned back. Nothing lay ahead.

Retracing her steps. Her footprints in the mud. Like a drunken person, unsteady on her feet. She was feeling oddly excited. Despite her tiredness, excited.

She returned to the littered roadway—there, the child's clothing she'd mistaken so foolishly for a doll, or a child. There, the Toyota at its sharp tilt in the ditch. Within minutes a tow truck could haul it out, if she could contact a garage—so far as she could see the vehicle hadn't been seriously damaged.

[ . . . ]

She walked on, not certain where she was headed. The sky was darkening to dusk. Shadows lifted from the earth. She saw lights ahead—lights?—the gas station, the café—to her surprise and relief, these appeared to be open.

[ . . . ]

M.R. couldn't believe her good luck! She would have liked to cry with sheer relief. Yet a part of her brain thinking calmly
Of
course.
This
has
happened
before.
You
will
know
what
to
do.

At a gas pump stood an attendant in soiled bib overalls, shirtless, watching her approach. He was a fattish man with snarled hair, a sly fox-face, watching her approach. Uneasily M.R. wondered—would the attendant speak to her, or would she speak to him, first? She was trying not to limp. Her leather shoes were hurting her feet. She didn't want a stranger's sympathy, still less a stranger's curiosity.

“Ma'am! Somethin' happen to ya car?”

There was a smirking sort of sympathy here. M.R. felt her face heat with blood.

She explained that her car had broken down about a mile away. That is—her car was partway in a ditch. Apologetically she said: “I could almost get it out by myself—the ditch isn't deep. But . . .”

How pathetic this sounded! No wonder the attendant stared at her rudely.

“Ma'am—you look familiar. You're from around here?”

“No. I'm not.”

“Yes, I know you, ma'am. Your face.”

M.R. laughed, annoyed. “I don't think so. No.”

Now came the sly fox-smile. “You're from right around here, ma'am, eh? Hey sure—I know you.”

“What do you mean? You know—me? My name?”