The Rescuer

The Rescuer

A Novella

Joyce Carol Oates

Contents

Chapter One

A
call came from home. Your brother, they said.

It was like the crashing fall of a stalactite —a giant stalactite made of ice.

What of my brother, I said. I was the youngest sister of the brood and could not see what any of them had to do with me.

The voice was my father’s but funneled through some sort of tunnel- or time-warp. These were people who refused to use cell phones and did not “do” e-mail and their way of communication was the old-fashioned land-phone prominent in their kitchen on its special little table.

“Your brother needs help. He is not well. He refuses to speak to us and will no longer pick up the phone. We have tried and failed as you know. God knows we have tried and failed with Harvey and we are not young any longer.
You
are young, and live close to him.”

This was false. This was a lie. I lived at least two hundred miles from Harvey. It was all I could stammer—“No!
You
live closer.”

My father explained that Harvey had taken a
leave of absence
from the Seminary and was living now in Trenton, New Jersey.

The term
leave of absence
was enunciated with care. There was the wish, on my father’s part, that this term not be interpreted as
dropped out, been expelled, failed.

I had not heard this news. I was stunned and even a little frightened to be told that (1) my brother lived less than sixty miles from me; (2) my brother had dropped out of the Seminary.

My God-besotted brother who was the only person I’d ever heard of who, already in middle school, was convinced that it was his destiny to be a “man of God.”

This information was too confusing for me to process. My father continued to speak as my mother, who must have been leaning her ear close to the receiver, spoke also, more forcibly. The overlapping voices made me feel that my brain had split and the two halves were being shaken like chestnuts in a metal container—noise, static, all sense of words lost.

“I can’t see Harvey. I—I have no time for . . .”

“Your poor brother is alone, and you know how innocent and unworldly he is. You know he has ‘moods’—‘fugues.’ Please look in upon him, as you are his sister and our dear daughter. Be kind to him, if you can.”

Badly I wanted to break the connection. This was so unfair!

Mercilessly the voices droned on: “And if you could shop for him. And now and then cook a meal for him if you would be so kind . . .”

“I can’t. I don’t have time. I have my own life now.”

“God bless you, dear. If you can do these things for your poor brother, and your parents. We are so helpless here. We are not so well ourselves. We are not so young any longer and already the temperature is so cold at night and the wind whistling through this old house, and the terrible winter looming ahead . . .”

I’d stopped listening. A pounding of blood in my ears drowned out the yammering voices. I muttered
Good night!
and broke the connection.

Will not. Can’t make me. No longer. I am not your captive daughter now.

* * *

Hurrying on the stairs and talking excitedly to myself and my heel caught in something frayed and suddenly I was plunging forward, downward, headfirst down the remainder of the stairs to strike the hardwood floor and for a stunned moment lying motionless trying to determine if I was alive, or not; if I was conscious, or not; if I’d broken any bones, or stimulated my heart into a wild crazed tachycardia; a chill blackness came over me, like something being swept by a faceless custodian with one of those wide brushy brooms; and someone was shaking my shoulder gently but urgently, a concerned face hovered above mine—
Hello? Are you all right? Let me help you. . .

One of the young-women residents in Newcomb Hall. A kindly individual with a familiar face though I didn’t know her name and now in my deep embarrassment I could only stammer thank you, yes I am all right, I am fine, pressing a wad of tissues against my nose that was leaking blood, thank you
so much.

Eager to escape! For I could not bear being exposed as clumsy, and pitiable.

Out of the residence hall then, walking swiftly if not very steadily in the cold wet air and I was halfway to my destination when I realized that I’d rushed outside without a coat. Snowflakes melting in my hair, on my eyelashes and warm cheeks.

Leaves stuck to the soles of my feet like sticky tongues. I felt a singe of terror kicking at them.

For a frightening moment I could not recall where I was. Where I was headed. Pulses beat angrily in my head
I am not your captive now!

I remembered then, I was due at Jester College, one of the University’s residential colleges, where the master of the college was hosting a Newcomb Fellows’ reception. By the time I arrived at the Gothic archway of the master’s entrance, my parents’ hateful words were dissipated and lost.

* * *

In the Graduate College of the University, I was one of eleven Newcomb Fellows. We were four young women and seven young men and we were all graduates of good second-tier universities from which we’d graduated
summa cum laude
and for this reason the great University founded in the eighteenth century, buttressed against financial crises with an endowment of $25 million, had cast out lifelines to us, to pull us out of the choppy cannibal sea and onto the floating island of the historic University. We were scholars in the humanities and social sciences; our futures shimmered before us like the most seductive of mirages—academic appointments at good universities, freedom to devote to scholarship, a commitment to teaching, too—a protected life, utterly enviable. My brother Harvey, older than I by several years, had preceded me into this insulated and protected world; he was a scholar-seminarian, or had been. I was twenty-three and very ambitious. My face was bland as smooth-carved soapstone yet felt to me, from within, like one of those pen-and-ink drawings by Matisse of sharp-featured females. My voice was low, murmurous, and gracious; my voice would be described as a distinctly “feminine” voice; if I did not modulate it, my voice would resemble the harsh cracked cry of a famished bird.

At the reception, Newcomb Fellows were introduced to older post-docs and professors in the humanities. At such occasions, I maneuvered myself very well. I am a small light-boned person with a pleasing smile that lights up as motion-sensitive lights switch on when a human presence approaches. And unobtrusively I made a small evening meal out of the appetizers served at the reception, for I was very frugal, and meant to save money in any way that I could; in my book bag, I secreted away a few extra appetizers wrapped in paper napkins, for midnight when I was likely to be famished.

My scholarly dissertation was to be in the cultural anthropology of religion. I was studying with Professor A. who was a world authority on the both the Abrahamic religions of Africa and several indigenous African religions with long histories in the regions now known as Zimbabwe and Sudan. Professor A. had entrusted me with a rare manuscript in the now mostly extinct Eweian language, which had been several times translated, but never, in Professsor A.’s opinion, accurately; under his guidance, I would translate it, and interpret it.

At the crowded reception I sighted Professor A. across the room. His gaze moved over me, I thought, without recognition; but perhaps the elderly white-haired gentleman had not seen me.

Others were glancing toward me—at my face which was throbbing with heat. A thin trickle of something liquid ran from my nose but I’d captured it in a paper napkin, I’d thought, and blotted it away, before anyone could see.

Someone asked if I’d hurt myself, my eyes and my nose appeared to be bruised. Quickly I denied this. I had not
hurt myself
. I was fine except—a family crisis made it necessary for me to leave the University for a few days, unavoidably.

Family crisis? What was this?

It was utterly shocking to me—my crow-voice, not my soft-modulated feminine voice, had spoken, uttering words I had not meant to speak.

Now I worried that there were blood-drops on my clothes. I could not bring myself to glance downward, to see.

Chapter Two

I
t was a surprise and a shock to see where my brother was living.

The house at 11 Grindell Park did not even look inhabited. It was a weatherworn English Tudor that had once been impressive, you could see—like other, similar houses built in a semi-circle around the derelict park where at the apex of the semi-circle was a small Greek Revival temple that appeared to be a public library, its columns and walls now defaced with graffiti. The park was deserted except for a scattering of homeless individuals who sat, or lay, unmoving as corpses, and dark-skinned boys with pants halfway down their hips as in gangsta films and videos. There were a few others, adult males, who seemed to be arranged like chess pieces, each near-stationary in his own part of the park yet keenly aware, you sensed, of the others. You were made to think of vultures except these were ground-creatures and the storm-damaged trees of the abandoned little urban park would have been too weak to support their weight.

Grindell Park was just inside the Trenton city limits, two blocks from traffic-clogged Camden Avenue. In this part of the city Camden Avenue was a succession of fast-food restaurants, gas stations, and small businesses of which a conspicuous number were shuttered and their properties for rent. Beyond the busy street was a neighborhood of run-down wood frame houses, many of these for rent or abandoned as well. And then there was Grindell Park, another block farther from Camden Avenue, a once-prestigious Trenton neighborhood. It was mystifying to me, as to my parents, why Harvey had moved to Trenton, where he could have known no one; and why to such a neighborhood?

Until now I’d imagined that I knew my brother. I had not always liked him—(to be candid, Harvey hadn’t much liked me, or even noticed me)—but I had always admired and envied him and hoped to emulate him in his strategies of escape from our household.

Parked my car at the trash-littered curb in front of 11 Grindell and by the time I removed the key from the ignition the sharp-eyed gangsta boys in the park had already checked it out—secondhand, tarnished, economy-sized, foreign (“Mazda”)—and dismissed it.

Still, I locked the doors. My laptop was inside, beneath a pile of clothes.

The English Tudor house, once a private home, had been crudely renovated and partitioned into apartments. What must have been an elegant front foyer was now an entryway with a scuffed and soiled tile floor and along one wall a row of cheap aluminum mailboxes.

At a distance of several feet I could recognize Harvey’s pinched little block letters—
HARVEY SELDEN, APT. 3B
.

Two hulking young men in their twenties were descending the stairs, loudly. With them was a large bald dog that, sighting me, began barking hysterically.

The taller of the young men was gripping the dog’s chain-leash. Seeing the look of fear in my face he laughed and assured me—“Hey li’l dude, Dargo ain’t no danger.”

The young man was rail-thin, lanky. His skin was the hue of eggplant, velvety and beautiful. But out of his head sprang fantastical dreadlocks that fell halfway down his back and the way he stared and grinned at me was not comforting.

“You sure you in the right place, li’l dude?”—with a quick canny assessing gaze taking in my pale skin, my facial features, “Come lookin for Mister Selden, is you? He home.”

He was laughing at me. Quick-flashing shark-white teeth as he gripped the dog’s leash loosely enough so that the dog could lunge at me, as I backed away and cringed.

The dog was pig-shaped, with a pig-snout. Pinched little eyes glaring with rage. It was a pit bull, I thought—bred to attack.

He will not let that dog attack me. Of course he would not.

In my fright and confusion I had no more than a blurred impression of a third person, an older man, in the gloom of the first-floor landing, who’d been following the young men and calling after them on their thunderous descent down the stairs. It might have been that the young men had taken something from the man he hadn’t wanted to give them but they were so openly derisive and playful, they didn’t seem like thieves.

As I cringed back against the row of cheap mailboxes the dreadlock-boy allowed the incensed Dargo to stand on his hind legs and snap and bite at me, so close I felt the dog’s hot spittle on my hands, which I’d raised to protect my face.

The other youth was shorter, and heavier; his skin was sallow, his eyes pinched and his face curiously flat like a sea-creature that is all spherical face, with frontal eyes. His grin was strained and elated as if he’d have liked his friend to release Dargo but he kept a formal distance between us, half-hiding behind the dreadlock-boy who was smirking and teasing: “He you’ brother is he, hey? Girl, that be some
bro-ther
.”

I had no idea what this jeering remark meant. The young man was combative and self-possessed and spoke in a fluent, fluid, mocking way, like a rap artist; on the right side of his handsome face was a tattoo, savage yet symmetrical. Seeing how he’d frightened me he relented, “Yo, damn dog!”—yanking Dargo away.

The two youths were loud-laughing and contemptuous slamming out the front door. I was trembling badly: Dargo’s spittle was cooling on my hands.

Whoever had been on the first-floor landing hadn’t seemed to see me cowering in fear below, or hadn’t cared to see. He’d retreated and disappeared from view.

Had it been Harvey? I seemed to know, yes it was.

I knocked on the door of 3B. Inside there was silence, as of an indrawn breath.

“Hello? Harvey? It’s . . . me.”

I lifted my fist to knock again, a little louder, and the door was suddenly opened, and there my brother Harvey stood before me, a look of astonishment on his face.

Astonishment and something else—dismay, disapproval.

“Lydia? What are you . . .”

Harvey blinked and squinted behind me, toward the stairs. I thought
He is disappointed. He expected the boys to return.

In our mutual surprise we stared at each other. Here was something strange: Harvey was shorter than I remembered him.

My brother had always been tall and lanky, since he’d been a young teenager. By the age of twenty he’d been at least six feet tall. But now, he couldn’t have been more than five feet eight or nine. (The last I’d had my height checked, I was about five feet six.) And Harvey was thinner, almost sickly. His narrow jaws were covered in stubble and his eyes, always mournful and brooding, were threaded with broken capillaries.

Harvey appeared to be only partly dressed. Soiled jeans, an undershirt, no shoes and no socks.

I tried to explain,
They
had sent me.

Harvey would know who
they
were who’d sent me to look after him and also to spy on him for their sake.

(I had called my parents back, to get Harvey’s address. Why I had capitulated to their unjust demand I will never know.)

(All of what followed from that act was nothing I had wished for myself and yet somehow, it seemed to be unfolding as in a script written by a malicious stranger, in opposition to my deepest desire.)

Harvey was in a state of such nerves, I had to repeat what I’d said.

He kept glancing behind me, peering down at the foyer below. Outside, the dog’s hysterical barking had faded; the boys were gone.

Dismayed Harvey stared at me, his youngest sister. He’d have liked to simply shut the door—shut it in my face—but instead he sighed, and relented, inviting me inside.

“Since you’re here, Lydia.”

* * *

He is not happy to see me. Of course, this is a stupid mistake.

I stepped inside the apartment. I glanced furtively about the room—a high-ceilinged dimly lit space containing mismatched shabby furniture, boxes and cartons and stacks of books and a badly scuffed hardwood floor. The windows were without curtains or blinds. The overhead light was a bare bulb of about sixty watts. It might have been a hotel room in a cheap welfare hotel.

Harvey was very distracted. Though he tried to talk to me, and to listen to me, clearly his mind was elsewhere; he was alert to every sound in the house, and on the street; a muscle twitched in his unshaven jaws and his bloodshot eyes seemed without focus. He failed to invite me to sit down. He failed to offer me anything—even a glass of water.

There was a discomfiting smell in the place—something acrid, fermented, gassy. And beneath, a prevailing odor of dirty laundry, unwashed flesh.

Gamely I tried to explain another time why I’d come, why my parents had sent me. I did not tell Harvey that I was on a mission to “help” him—that would have been insulting to his pride.

My brother had always been proud. Vain of his high grades, his “good-boy” reputation. Adults had admired him. Less so, people his own age.

“Father and Mother would have come to see you themselves,” I said, unconvincingly, “except—it’s so far for them to drive, and they’re—old . . . not well . . .”

My parents were not old, really: scarcely in their sixties. Not
old
.

Nor were they unwell, so far as I knew. Despite what they’d said on the phone.

All this while Harvey was trying clumsily to hide something in his hand. Trying to divert my attention he maneuvered himself to a table in a corner of the room, where he shoved whatever he’d been holding—(a small package or bag?)—beneath a pile of newspapers.

By degrees Harvey regained a measure of his old composure. He’d gotten over the shock and something of the displeasure of seeing me in the corridor outside his door and spoke to me in the voice of an elder brother giving advice to his naïve and intrusive sister: “Jesus, Lydia! You shouldn’t have come here. Our parents have nothing to do with my life any longer—they are the only bond between us, and that bond has been broken. They know this, and you should know it, too.

“You should not be their
handmaid.
” He paused, wiping furiously at his nose. He’d worked himself up to a kind of anger. “I guess you can stay the night, then drive back tomorrow to—wherever you came from.”

Surely Harvey must have known where I was in graduate school, at which distinguished University, quite as distinguished as the seminary he’d quit, and so this was some sort of brotherly insult, I supposed. I tried not to feel hurt. I tried not to reveal hurt.

“If that’s what you want, Harvey. But I think—”

“Yes. It is what I want. Haven’t you been listening, for Christ’s sake!”

In Harvey’s presence, inevitably I was cast back into the pitiable role of
baby sister
—an object of bemused affection, or affable contempt. My sisters had sometimes liked me, and sometimes not; not often, my older siblings had time for me. Now Harvey said, coldly: “Our parents have no right to interfere in my life—or in yours. This is not a safe environment for a girl like you.”

I thought
But what about you?

For it seemed to me, in the dimly lighted room, that was badly cluttered as a storage room with boxes (unpacked books and papers) on the floor, and scattered white plastic bags underfoot, that something was wrong with my brother: part of his face was missing.

Harvey’s hair was long and unkempt, falling to his shoulders, but at the crown of his head he was beginning to go bald. The effect was eerie—as if someone had grabbed his long hair and tugged it back.

For as long as I could remember Harvey wore his dull-brown hair conventionally cut, trimmed at the sides and back. He’d dressed neatly, inconspicuously. If he was to be a “man of God” it was not as a fervid Evangelist preacher but as a scholarly theologian like his hero Reinhold Niebuhr. He’d never smoked, never drank, so far as anyone in the family knew; he’d never been involved with girls or women, and had had few friends. He’d never appeared in my sight so altered, so—disheveled. It was as if a giant hand had snatched up poor Harvey and shaken him, hard. His skin was both sallow and red-mottled as if he were very warm; his hair hung in his face, in greasy strands. He wore soiled jeans and a soiled T-shirt. In college and at the seminary he’d worn proper white shirts, ties, and jackets; he’d acquired a settled yet expectant look as of middle age, while in his early twenties. My parents had proudly shown photographs of their only son studying at the distinguished seminary at which Reinhold Niebuhr had himself taught fifty years before.
Our son is studying to be a man of God!

Such silly boastfulness was typical of my parents. Perhaps it is typical of all parents. I did not feel envy for Harvey, only resentment and frustration.

When I did well in school, my parents seemed scarcely to notice.

Good work, Lydia. Very good.

There is a finite supply of love in a family, perhaps. By the time the youngest child arrives, that supply has diminished.Harvey was complaining: “You don’t seem to understand, Lydia, that this part of Trenton is an environment in which a—a person—like you—will be singled out for the wrong kind of attention. You will be
singular.
You’re a young Caucasian woman, you’re attractive, you’re alone, and you are vulnerable.”
Attractive
and
vulnerable
were uttered accusingly.
Alone
seemed to me unfair.

“But I’m not alone. I’m with you.”

Harvey stared at me, offended.

“You are not
with me
. You’ve just intruded, uninvited. And you’re leaving, tomorrow.”

I saw that Harvey’s hands were trembling. His fingernails were ragged. He looked at least ten years older than his age. We had not embraced in a greeting—we hadn’t brushed lips against the other’s cheek—but I was aware of my brother’s fierce breath like something combustible. The thought came to me
Oh God—he’s sick. He’s a drug addict.
I didn’t wish to think that my brother might be paying those hulking youths to service him in ways other than just supplying drugs.

In a bitter voice Harvey continued to complain about our parents intruding in his life, and how little they understood of his life. He’d worked himself up into a state in which he was cursing the Seminary as well—a “Protestant refuge against reality.” In a voice heavy with sarcasm he spoke of individuals whose names meant little to me, professors of his at the seminary.