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 B

might be calling but he doesn't mind.
     
     
And he's too much of a gentleman to ask.
     
     
Persia makes the call at the front of the shop, as if not wanting to be overheard. And Leslie and Iris are left alone together..
     
     
slightly uncomfortable together... for Leslie is thinking that he should say something to Iris about Duke Courtney's behavior, his inexplicable behavior these past several months, for which Leslie feels a confused sort of guilt; and Iris, stuffing her mouth with cake, is hoping Leslie won't say anything about Duke except that he will be coming over this afternoon, he's late but he means to help us celebrate, he wanted you and your mother to be surprised.
     
     
Leslie says awkwardly, "Your angel food cake is certainly a success, Iris."
     
     
Iris shrugs as if embarrassed, or annoyed. "Oh, they made us learn, Uncle Leslie, in school. All the girls have to take home economics class starting in seventh grade." Suddenly she's laughing, an angry sort of laugh. "Making beds, learning to cook, sewing skirts, aprons, pot holders. My God, pot holders!"
     
     
Leslie says reprovingly, "But the cake is delicious. Much better than bakery cake."
     
     
"Is it?"
     
     
It seems rude, Persia gone so long.
     
     
In Leslie Courtney, Duke's handsome patrician features have been smudged as if by a mischievous giant thumb. His eyes are beautiful and gold-flecked and shy and squinty. His hair is the color of damp sandpaper, shading to gray. His prim, boyish glasses give him an air of perpetual expectation, like a man always on tiptoe. Iris has overheard her father joking that her uncle Leslie has been in love with Persia for twelve years... but why is that a joke?
     
     
Above Leslie's head, on the wall, is a large framed photomontage, one of the "constellations" he used to make out of numberless miniature photographs of children. In it, hundreds of children's faces are squeezed together in a vertiginous crush, multiplied by mirroring and repetition techniques in the shape of a Christmas tree: MERRY CHRISTMAS 1949! the caption reads in silver lettering.
     
     
Both white and Negro children are in the composition. Iris recalls that her own face, at the age of seven, is somewhere in the design, in fact several times, but she has forgotten where.
     
     
The effect of the Christmas tree constellation is less one of celebration, which Iris's uncle had intended, than that of a smothering cascade of humanity. Staring at it, you feel your breath start to quicken.
     
     
But since Leslie sees her staring at the composition Iris is led to say, not altogether sincerely, that it's too bad he doesn't do the constellations any longer, and Leslie says, Yes," with an air of perplexed hurt, "I think so too. I never understood why the people you'd expect to be most enthusiastic, the children's parents, didn't support them... some were even unpleasant. I was even accused of being 'eccentric' by a columnist for the Chronicle, a self-styled critic." Considering the composition on the wall, Leslie appears, in profile, brooding and almost angry, like Duke Courtney recalling an old injustice. He says, I was applying a law of nature to art, as I always do in my noncommercial work. I don't remember the precise principle now but it was a sort of mathematical formula... the same faces repeated, some in mirror reversals. The symmetry of faces, the symmetry of the Christmas tree.... You know Iris, you're in the tree somewhere."
     
     
Iris says, "Maybe the faces are too small. For the parents' taste, I mean." She speaks hurriedly, before Leslie can get to his feet to look for her miniature face. She feels a sickish dread of seeing it.
     
     
Leslie says stubbornly, "But that was the idea of the constellation as a form. And theme, too-individual faces are small, in the ":r't'eof 3life. Obviously!"
     
     
/r"if"fsc, 5Jie u kno"c, 1ces and coi'ored mixed... that offends some people. Some parents.
     
     
Leslie shrugs. This might be a