Free Joyce Carol Oates - Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart by Because It Is Bitter, Because It Is My Heart Page A

are on permanent, dusty display at the front of the store. Here too things are continually being added, nothing removed: baby pictures, family pictures, brides and grooms in their wedding finery... graduation classes in academic gowns and mortarboards... uniformed American Legionnaires, parading...
     
     
sports teams, Rotary clubs, Sunday school classes, Chambers of Commerce, Flag Day ceremonies, office picnics... Hammond street scenes, views of the Cassadaga River, factories and slag heaps and smokestacks... scenes of the winter countryside... montages of babies and children in which constellations of faces are crowded together, as in a human hive-and in their midst, in no evident relationship to anything else, are photographs of the Courtneys: Iris's father as a dashing young man in his twenties, in a straw hat, a cigarette in a holder jutting FDR-style from his mouth; Duke and Persia as "The Incomparable Courtneys," in elegant formal attire, poised in what appears to be a foxtrot position, arms upraised, legs gracefully stretched, each pair of eyes gaily locking with the camera lens; Persia, very young, a beautiful dreamy full-faced girl, with her infant daughter wrapped in a lacy shawl... and with her year-old daughter... and with her two-year-old daughter... so, it might seem, to infinity. The camera's gaze is waist-high, a technical trick to make the subjects appear taller than the viewer, more exalted. Iris never wants to seek out these photographs but always does. As soon as she walks into the shop.
     
     
Feeling that stab of visceral horror: You are going to die, here"s proof She's on the street in front of her uncle's store, drawing deep hard breaths, fresh charged rain-smelling air. Though there are shafts of bright sunshine piercing the clouds it has begun to rain...
     
     
fat breathless drops. And there's a roiling kind of light. And a rainbow the palest glimmer of a rainbow above the spires of the big bridge.
     
     
Iris breathes deep into the lungs the way Duke and Persia inhale their cigarettes, as if drawing life from them. Iris too has begun to smoke, some... though never in the presence of adults.
     
     
She hears thunder that turns out to be, a minute later, not thunder but the roaring of motorcycles, the revving, gunning, uphill climbing of a dozen Harley-Davidsons on a street below Main, along the river.
     
     
Punks and hoodlums, Iris's father has said of the youngish leather-jacketed unshaven men who drive these motorcycles; just steer clear of them, he has warned. Iris looks but cannot see them from where she stands.
     
     
For this afternoon's photography session, Iris is wearing a pale yellow summer dress, eyelet collar and cuffs, and flat-heeled black patent leather "ballerina" shoes, and her snarly hair has been shampooed, vigorously brushed, fixed neatly in place with gold barrettes. Her delicately boned almost-beautiful face gives no suggestion of her thoughts, the crude mean forbidden filthy thoughts that so often assail her, even at dreamy moments.
     
     
Though now it's another sort of thought entirely, sudden as a flash of summer lightning: He's going to show up here, today! Of course! His brother's fortieth birthday!
     
     
Persia slices wedges of birthday cake for the three of them, Persia holds the knife out commandingly for Leslie Courtney to lick. "Is the frosting good?" she asks. There's a bright aggressive edge to her voice; the wine has brought a flush to her face.
     
     
Leslie grins like a boy and says, "Yes, yes, very.
     
     
The scratchy old phonograph is playing orchestral music from Carmen, turned low.
     
     
Persia smiles and jokes with Leslie, and then for some reason she's staring... and not smiling. She is possibly thinking, This isn't the one, this is the brother. Then the crystal face of her wristwatch catches her eye. "Oh, damn! I have to make a telephone call, Les. Do you mind?"
     
     
Certainly Les doesn't mind.
     
     
He's curious about whom Persia