Free I Am No One You Know by Joyce Carol Oates Page B

and decks, built at the top of an incline above a narrow, deep river; in a residential area of tall trees, two-acre lots, a rural-suburban neighborhood.) Staring at the dark water lapping against the dock, the pebbly shoreline. Thinking I am his wife, I love him. What his life is, it’s mine. Except when he came to her, she flinched at his footsteps above her, steeled herself against his voice though she knew it would be a voice of calm, of control. He said, quietly, “Come back to the house, he’ll think you don’t want him here.” She was shivering, she drew breath to reply yet could not, so he said, “Should I send him away?” and still she could not reply, seeing how across the river the treeline was dense as a single tarry substance, thickly smudged as with a trowel. Above the Mendocino mountains miles away heat lightning was pulsing forked and silent. “All right, then,” her husband said, “I’ll send him away,” and now she spoke, her voice hoarse, “No. You can’t do that,” and affably he said, “No. That’s right, I can’t,” not ironic, or not ironic in such a way she would be left with no choice but to register as ironic; for always at such moments, such was her husband’s subtlety,his kindness and tact, he would allow her a margin of not-knowing, not acknowledging; and she said, not wanting to sound as if she were begging, “I love you,” and he said, “But I could go away, if you’d like that,” and she said quickly, in pain, “No,” and he said, patiently, as if addressing a frightened or intimidated child, “Then come back to the house, now.” She was staring at the slow-lapping shadowed water that might have been not water at all but molten lead, waves of whatever minor and inconsequential river flowing to what destination she could not, in the exigency of the moment, have named; understanding how it might be dangerous in this man’s presence to seem not to have heard when in fact one had heard but she still could not speak, nor did she glance back as with an exhalation of breath and a muttered inaudible expletive her husband ascended the steps, and was gone. She saw herself climbing up the steps, hurrying after him, Wait! I’m coming! clutching at his muscled forearm Yes of course I’m here yet she remained sitting on the steps, motionless, paralyzed, as if lost in a dream, in that suspension of volition and even thought between sleep and waking, staring at the river waiting to understand what she would do, or had already done.

Me & Wolfie, 1979
    F UCK I’ M THINKING, Me is cracking up again.
    This season I was 13 yrs old & Me began to be paranoid about staying in our new rented bungalow in Olcott, New York by herself. Or through the night even with her dog-devoted son Wolfie on the premises. It had to do (was Wolfie’s theory) with the wind blowing thin & whistling across wide choppy bruised-blue Lake Ontario & the fact, Me didn’t discover till she’d signed the lease for 12 months, that the lane leading down to our bungalow was mostly sand and mud and at night black as pitch, no street lights. Me’d stuck us at the edge of a broken-down lake-resort town, signed the lease in a 100-watt mood ( 100 -watt mood was what Me called her happy-craziness, & this term was apt) & all to escape the enemy.
    What enemy? (Wolfie didn’t ask.)
    Me was in a habit of raking her nails through Wolfie’s tender feelings saying in her I-just-thought-of-this-shit voice how’d she know Wolfie wouldn’t side with the enemy if, in the night, the enemy suddenly showed up?
    Enemy was Me-code for them as in (for instance) us vs. them but mainly Wolfie’s ex-father whom we’d managed to elude for at leasttwo years by the time of Olcott. (Can you have an ex-father? The guy who was Me’s ex-husband is what I’m saying.) Says Me, “I wouldn’t trust a kid your age, wolf-eyes & wolf-habits, sticking his big toe in the muck of male puberty, as far as I could toss him.”
    “Fuck you,