Wonderland (29 page)

“What?”

“I am leaving Dr. Pedersen. I am leaving.”

Jesse’s heart lurched. “You’re leaving? Leaving them—?”

“I am leaving them to start my own life.”

“But—”

“Yes, I am leaving today. I am going to a hotel in Buffalo. Everything is planned,” she said hotly. “I can make plans. I can make a list and carry it out. I am not drunk, I am absolutely sober. Look.” And she held her hands out before her. They trembled only a little.

“You’re going to a hotel now? Today? To a hotel?”

“If you won’t take me downtown, I’ll take a taxi. I have money. I can take care of myself.”

“But—What will he—”

“He will be very angry. I know. But for years I’ve known I would have to leave him. It’s a question of survival. My sanity. I tried to explain this to my father and to Reverend Wieden but they didn’t understand; men don’t understand, they don’t see that I am a human being of my own, I am … I am Mary Shirer.… I am still Mary Shirer.” She began to cry. “I want to go back to being her, that girl. I want … I want to be myself again … I don’t know how this happened, this fat, the time that went by.… So many years have gone by.… I’m afraid I might go crazy, I might die if I don’t leave him.…”

“But what are you going to do?” Jesse said. “How will you live?”

“Alone. I’ll live alone,” she said, crying. “For years I’ve known it, I’ve been planning for it, and now the time is here; I will die if I don’t escape from him, from that house; I am not a freak like the rest of them, I didn’t used to be a freak and you were not a freak in the beginning either.… I loved you right away, Jesse, because you were like me, the way I used to be. I wanted to be loved too, like you. I wanted to be loved by Dr. Pedersen and no one else. I wanted to be owned by him.… But I wasn’t a freak in the beginning. I was Mary Shirer. I don’t know what happened, what he did to me, but I have to leave him now because … because in another week you’ll be gone, Jesse, and there will be no one to help me.…”

Jesse stared at the highway ahead. It looked as if there were heat waves, teasing, in the distance. Could he smell the heat itself, or was that sharp sweet scent from Mrs. Pedersen?

“You’ll help me, won’t you, Jesse, you’ll help me …?”

She touched his arm. He flinched.

“Otherwise I will go crazy. I will die. I will have to take my own life.”

Her sobbing became wild. Jesse drove along in that same weightless, suspended daze, the same pressurized trance he had endured for the
past several days. “Jesse, please. Please. Answer me, don’t turn away from me now.… I will die if I don’t escape.… It’s for the salvation of my soul!” Jesse turned to stare at her, alarmed, and it seemed to him that he was staring directly into her soul—he had seen it the day of her collapse in the bathroom—and he could not turn away—

“Jesse …?”

“Yes. All right,” he whispered.

She began to weep helplessly, noisily, like a child. Jesse drove all the way downtown, bypassing the university, his face grown violently hot. In the rearview mirror he saw a red, puffy face,
was that his face?
—the face of a fat boy of uncertain age, a stranger.
You were not a freak in the beginning
.…

Downtown, Jesse circled the hotel Mrs. Pedersen had chosen while she dabbed at her wet face and tried to fix herself up. Her flesh-toned make-up had smeared badly. She wiped her face and throat and the back of her neck. “Jesse, what will I say to them? I don’t know how to check into a hotel.… Somebody else always did it for me.…”

Jesse’s voice sounded hollow. “I don’t know. Just say you would like a room.”

“I would like a room.”

“Maybe you should ask the price first—”

“No, I don’t care about the price! I have plenty of money. My family has always had plenty of money. I have enough for the rest of my life.…
I would like a room. A single room.”
Jesse rounded the block a second time, then a third time, while Mrs. Pedersen stared out at the crowded street. Downtown Buffalo was airless and warm. She said uncertainly, “You’re coming in with me, Jesse, aren’t you?”

“All right.”

“Please come in. Please. Just stand by the door and wait for me. You don’t have to come to the desk.”

“All right.”

“It’s so busy here … everything is so confusing …”

Jesse managed to park the car, and he and Mrs. Pedersen walked back to the hotel, both ungainly in the heat. Mrs. Pedersen carried her big straw purse and Jesse carried her shopping bag and coat. The shopping bag was beginning to tear. The entire right half of Jesse’s body, the half near Mrs. Pedersen, had begun to prickle violently. He had never
felt anything like it before. Jesse gnawed at his lip and stared into the faces of people passing them: these people knew everything. They could recognize freaks when they saw them. Mrs. Pedersen was talking nervously, loudly. It was obvious that she had been drinking. These strangers on the Main Street of Buffalo could see that perfectly well—a huge drunken woman and a huge boy, waddling along in the sunlight, both of them panicked.

They went into the hotel and approached the desk. Mrs. Pedersen clutched at Jesse’s arm. Finally he went up to the desk clerk and said, “My mother would like a single room, please.”

The desk clerk smiled past Jesse at Mrs. Pedersen, who stood a few feet away. “Yes, for how many nights?”

“I don’t know,” Jesse said.

He turned miserably to Mrs. Pedersen.

“I don’t know.…” she said.

Silence.

“An indefinite amount of time?” asked the clerk politely.

“Yes, I think so,” said Jesse.

A bellhop took them up to the room, which looked out onto the street several floors below. It was not a very pleasant room. Mrs. Pedersen looked too large in it; she bumped into a writing desk, she nearly knocked over a lamp. Her face was florid and astonished. As soon as the bellhop left she went to the window and ran her finger along the sill. She held her finger for Jesse to see—it was dirty!

“I just can’t believe this, Jesse,” she said.

She sat down on the bed and it sagged beneath her. Jesse stood, not knowing what to do. Should he leave? What was going to happen? Mrs. Pedersen began taking things out of the shopping bag one by one, setting them on the bedspread, moving dumbly and slowly. She licked her lips. “Oh, I forgot something … I forgot something.…” she said slowly. “I should have stuffed some clothes in here.…”

“You didn’t bring any clothes?”

“I forgot. I forgot about clothes.”

They stared at each other. Mrs. Pedersen’s eyes were bloodshot.

“Oh, I forgot. How did I forget? You were in such a rush and I didn’t want to keep you waiting … I was afraid you might drive away without me.… I …”

“Maybe you could buy some clothes here,” Jesse said.

“No, I don’t want to go out. It’s so busy down there—all those people. No. I can’t go into a store. I think I’m going crazy, Jesse, I’ve got to get hold of myself.…
What he did to me, Jesse, what he did …!
I will never forget, my body and my soul have been sickened by it, by him, by the years as his wife.… I don’t know what will happen to me.…”

Jesse stared at her ugly, streaked face. What was going to happen? And then, wearily, after several minutes, he said what he had known all along he must say: “I’ll drive back to Lockport and get your clothes.”

“Oh, Jesse, will you? Will you? It would mean so much to me, Jesse, I left so much behind, I got confused and left so much behind.… I can make out a list and give it to you.…”

She looked around vaguely. Jesse got her some stationery from the desk. He lent her his own pen. It took her nearly twenty minutes to make out the list, her face contorted as she tried to think. Jesse went to the window and looked down at the street four stories below. He could hear Mrs. Pedersen’s heavy, strained breath. Occasionally she muttered something inaudible. Was this happening? Was this really happening? The windowpane was very grimy and it refracted the sun’s rays into a faint rainbow a few inches before Jesse’s eyes. Was any of this happening?

Behind the dirty glass, in the sky, there were great fluffy clouds. Puffs of clouds. The sky was a dead, flat blue, the clouds were perfectly white. Silence in the sky. One of the clouds compelled Jesse to look at it: it had the beginnings of a face, the features broad and shallow and mocking. But firm. There were eyes there, and a faint nose, and the indication of a mouth. Its expression distant but mocking.

Jesse blinked.

Mrs. Pedersen got to her feet with difficulty. “Here, Jesse. I think I have everything written down now.”

“Will you be all right while I’m gone?”

“Oh yes. Yes. I will be all right. Everything is all right. I’m not at all dizzy now, I’m perfectly well. Don’t I look perfectly well? I’m perfectly sober.”

Jesse nodded sadly.

He drove back to Lockport. It was four o’clock when he turned in the Pedersen driveway between the two wrought-iron spikes. He gave the list to Dora and said, “Mrs. Pedersen would like you to put these
things in a suitcase, please.” Astonished, Dora took the piece of paper from him. His heart hammering, Jesse went out to wait in their driveway. He pressed his hand against the hot metal of his car. That was real, that heat. That metal. After a while Dora appeared at the screen door, opening it awkwardly. Jesse went to help her. He took a large tan suitcase from her. She said, “This ain’t all. There’s more.” Another suitcase. She went back to get an armful of dresses. So many dresses! What did Mrs. Pedersen want with all these dresses? One of them had a sequined bodice.

“Thank you,” Jesse said.

The car was packed. Dora stood watching him back away, her hand against her mouth as if she were staring at something terrible. As he drove back to Buffalo his head swam with the speed, the heat, the smell of Mrs. Pedersen’s clothes.

He had to park some distance from the hotel. Carrying the two suitcases and the armload of dresses, he saw how openly people stared at him. Their expressions were guarded. Even in the hotel lobby people stared at him. He took the elevator to the fourth floor, and when he knocked on Mrs. Pedersen’s door she did not answer for several minutes. What was wrong? Then, at last, he heard her heavy footsteps. She slid the bolt and opened the door slowly, fearfully.

“Oh, Jesse, thank God.… I thought it might be
him
.… I thought you might have told him about me, that you might have brought him back with you.… Oh, thank God, thank God.…”

He helped her hang the dresses in the closet. Her mood changed and she chattered at him, excited, yet on the verge of tears still, occasionally lapsing into a shrill, surprising gaiety. Now he was certain she had been drinking. “Oh, wait until he finds out! Just wait! He doesn’t dream of the plans I’ve made, he could never believe that his wife, his stupid wife, could break free of him and begin her own life just like anyone else.… Oh, he’ll be so surprised.…”

As she was unpacking one of the suitcases, the telephone rang.

“What? But nobody knows I’m here.… Nobody knows where I am.…” Mrs. Pedersen cried.

The telephone rang again. Jesse went over to it and stood above it, his hands clasped together in front of his chest.

“Jesse, don’t answer it! It’s
him
!”

“But—but it can’t be—”

“I know it’s him. I know it.”

“But how would he know you were here?”

“He knows. He knows everything.”

“It can’t be Dr. Pedersen,” Jesse said.

Suddenly, grimly, he picked up the receiver.

The voice at the other end, crying “hello,” was Dr. Pedersen’s.

“Hello,” Jesse said blankly.

“Who is this? Jesse? Where is your mother? Is she there? Put her on the telephone, please.”

“She’s—she’s—”

Mrs. Pedersen had backed away, shaking her head.

“Jesse, put her on the telephone at once. I demand to speak to her!”

“She can’t—”

Mrs. Pedersen was shaking her head wildly.

“Jesse, do you hear me? I know where you are. Dora called me at the Clinic and I know exactly where your mother went, it’s exactly where she would go. I demand to speak to her. At once. I know she’s there, I know exactly what is going on. I am not coming to get her. I refuse to drive up there. Put your mother on the telephone at once, Jesse.”

“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” Jesse whispered.

“I told you to put her on the phone!”

“I can’t—”

“Jesse, do you hear me? Do you hear me?”

In a panic, Jesse slammed down the receiver.

He and Mrs. Pedersen stared at each other.

Finally she said in a quivering voice, “Thank you.… Thank you for saving me.…”

The telephone began ringing again.

“We’ll get out of here. We’ve got to get out of this room,” Mrs. Pedersen said. She hurried to the door. “Come on, Jesse. Please. We’ll go downstairs and let him call me, let him call all he wants. I won’t answer. He wants me to come back to him, to that awful life. He thinks he has power over me, but he hasn’t. Oh, listen to that telephone! He wants to drive me crazy!”

They went downstairs to the coffee shop. Mrs. Pedersen ordered cheeseburgers and French fries for both of them. Eating quickly, as if she were very hungry, Mrs. Pedersen began to revive. “I’ll tell you things about him nobody knows, Jesse. Secrets. Terrible secrets,” she
said in a low voice. “Oh yes, he’s a genius. Yes, a wonderful man. All of Lockport is proud of him, yes. They write stories about him. Yes. But there are secrets nobody knows except me.… He takes morphine, Jesse. Yes, morphine! Not every night, but often he gives himself an injection of morphine the way other people take a drink—and then he looks down upon people who drink; he said some nasty, unforgivable things about my mother, just because she liked to drink now and then. The hypocrite!” As Jesse stared, she wiped her mouth hard, as if to emphasize the truth of the words she spoke. “Yes, he takes morphine, all in secret; I’m the only person on earth who knows about it.… And the things he’s done to punish me! Once when we were married only a year he refused to speak to me for a month. To this day I don’t know why. I offended him somehow. He’s incredibly vain and proud. He won’t let me buy anything unless he has seen it or gives his approval of it. Once he took all my clothes away and I had to stay in the bedroom naked for three days … he brought my food up on a tray and left it by the door, as if I were an animal.… I thought I’d go crazy in that room! He did it to drive me crazy, Jesse. He likes to make me cry. Yes, it’s true, don’t look so surprised! He made me shave all the hair off my body for a long time, for years, and if it wasn’t shaved off well enough for him he took his razor and went over me.… He enjoys making me cry. Did you ever see that locked cabinet in his study? It’s always kept locked because he has certain books in it, awful books, with photographs of awful things. I can’t tell you what they are. There are photographs of men and women—you know—and other photographs of dismembered bodies, with captions beneath them like jokes. Books that make fun of everything. I almost fainted the first time he showed them to me. We were only married a few months … he made me read them and he stood behind me, watching.…”