Wonderland (28 page)

“Mother—” Jesse cried.

His voice was choked.

She stirred. Lumps of flesh like tumors hung from her hips and thighs and just above her knees, the skin mottled orange-purple, bluish, yellow; her ankles and feet were not quite so swollen, only plump and sturdy, as if about to seize him in an embrace. Jesse stared, and though he wanted to jump backward, back out into the hall, he could not move. He must wake her. He must make everything right again, he must take her robe from where it had fallen and put it on her, he must wash her face of that vomit, he must get rid of the empty liquor bottle that had rolled into a corner of the bathroom—he must act, he must take charge before Dr. Pedersen came home, and yet for several minutes he could not move at all. Mrs. Pedersen was coming to life. Her breaths thickened to groans. Her body shuddered. The eyes, milky and blind, fluttered so that Jesse could not hide, he could not turn away—he wanted to bend down and quickly close those eyes to keep her from discovering him—

She groaned—her breathing quickened—her eyes opened suddenly
and fastened themselves upon him. She looked up at him. Jesse felt as if a veil had been ripped away from her face and from his own, that they were staring at each other openly, confronting one of the terrible secrets of the world.

For several days after that Jesse moved in a private pressurized space: the very air seemed to exert a terrible pressure upon him. He could not locate it exactly on any part of his body. Sometimes he felt as if his heart might burst as he urged his body up a flight of stairs or out for a quick, desperate walk around the city—he found himself walking all the time, reluctant to come home—and sometimes his lungs ached, though he tried to breathe lightly and shallowly. At other times it was a dull ache that circled his head. He could not read now for more than half an hour at a time. He would go back to the university library in Buffalo and sit at a deserted table, a book in his hand … and yet he found after a few minutes that he was not reading at all, that his mind had gone dead.

He considered the big, ornate doors of the room he was in, an old-fashioned reading room. Invisibly he was unscrewing the screws, pulling out the hinges, taking note of the discolored indentations in the wood.…

In a panic, he turned back to the book he was reading: a series of lectures, given in England, on the central nervous system. Already he had read most of the books he would study in his first years of premedical school, and now he was reading books at random, suggested to him by Dr. Pedersen, books that belonged to Jesse’s remote future, an unimaginable future.…

Nine days left before he would leave for Ann Arbor
.

They were all going with him, except Frederich. Mrs. Pedersen talked about the trip all the time. Dr. Pedersen was going to take time off from his work. Hilda, stubborn and coy at first, had finally agreed to come along. They would drive him to his dormitory room, take hotel rooms nearby, get him settled, and only when he was certain that he could manage alone would they leave him. “We won’t abandon you,”
Mrs. Pedersen kept assuring him. She spoke tartly and breathlessly; she was always in a rush now, buying Jesse clothes, sewing small tidy labels on his things, even on towels—his initials,
J. P
. “That way nobody can steal your things. You have to be very careful,” she cautioned. At dinner she was eager to talk about how she spent her days: “Today I finally picked out a good trunk. I bought it at Williams Brothers on the condition that you approve of it, dear. Will you look at it after dinner?” Dr. Pedersen shared in her enthusiasm, though he hadn’t as much time as Mrs. Pedersen to spend on Jesse. He entrusted her with all the preparations for Jesse’s departure. She was brisk and efficient, always on the telephone, arranging to take a taxi downtown in order to pick out something for Jesse, even telephoning the dormitory residence in Ann Arbor to ask about the color scheme in the room Jesse would have. So much to do! She was in a flurry, and yet she was always back in time to prepare large pleasant dinners, slipping on an apron, humming happily out in the kitchen so that Jesse always heard her as soon as he stepped in the door, as if she were humming for his benefit.
I am out in the kitchen, I am normal. I am making a big normal meal
.

When she spoke to Dora, it was in the same high, efficient tone, though she seemed now to be giving Dora orders all the time. At the dinner table, her movements were sometimes abrupt; she upset her water glass two evenings in a row and Dr. Pedersen said, “Mary, whatever is wrong with you? Are you nervous about something?” She bit her lip and dabbed at herself with a napkin. “No, no, nothing at all,” she said. “I hope you aren’t working too hard these days, getting Jesse ready for college,” Dr. Pedersen said.

Mrs. Pedersen continued dabbing at herself, not meeting anyone’s eye. “No. I made up a list, dear. I just go down the list item by item. I’m not hurried at all. I can take care of it. I’m not nervous at all.”

Jesse tried not to look at her.

In just a few days he would be leaving
.

But how could he leave? He loved them. He loved all of them, even Frederich. Since the day Mrs. Pedersen had locked herself in the bathroom, there was a silent, abashed bond among Jesse and Frederich and Hilda that they never spoke of, never acknowledged in any way. It seemed impossible to Jesse that he would be leaving them. The air rang with panic. His head ached. Yet it was necessary to leave them in order to take his proper place someday in this family—Dr. Pedersen
had explained everything to him countless times. He invited Jesse into his study after dinner and talked to him cheerfully, dreamily, recalling his own days at the University of Michigan and his days in medical school there, talking for an hour or an hour and a half at a time while Jesse found himself staring at the closed door of Dr. Pedersen’s study, imagining how the screws could be taken out, carefully, deliberately, and how the door might be lifted off its hinges.… But when Dr. Pedersen asked him how his studies were going, Jesse was able to answer at once. Another voice seemed to answer for him. He could recite pages, chapters, he could outline entire books, speaking quickly and mechanically while Dr. Pedersen nodded. Sometimes it seemed to Jesse, joylessly, that he already knew everything. He spoke in so clear and unfaltering a voice that Dr. Pedersen could do no more than murmur enthusiastic agreement.

He no longer asked Hilda for help with calculus. He had stopped worrying about calculus. He did not want to think about it. And he felt his sister closed against him now, her fear softening her and yet deadening her to him, while her brittle mockery in the past had been a kind of camaraderie he had guessed at by instinct; now he did not dare to test her. He did not want to meet her gaze again and remember what she said about Mrs. Pedersen. It was too ugly. The secrets between them were too ugly. If he happened to glance at Frederich he sometimes saw Frederich watching him, but it meant nothing; the bond among them had to be silent because it was so ugly. Jesse wondered if Hilda and Frederich had known all along that their mother drank, hiding in corners, in the bathroom, even in the basement—Jesse remembered the several times he had seen her coming up from the basement empty-handed, a bright fresh color to her cheeks, greeting him eagerly: “I was just checking to see if the basement is leaking.… All that rain.…”

But he loved her. He would be leaving in a week.

And then, one day after lunch, before he could get out of the house with his books, he heard a knock on his door. He knew it was Mrs. Pedersen before he answered it.

“Where are you running off to today?” she asked.

Flat-footed, she stood in the doorway. Not yet invited in. She filled the doorway in a huge mint-green cotton house dress; on her feet were straw shoes with orange tassels and small brass mock bells on the toes.
She had brushed her hair so that the frizz was tamed into waves, lifting from her forehead. He could see the beginning of her pale scalp, where there were tiny flakes of skin.

“Just out,” Jesse said.

He had put on a white shirt and a tie.

“Are you going to Buffalo?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you’re going to Buffalo, you’re all dressed up.”

Jesse stared at the tassels on her shoes.

“I—I just wanted to ask you about your laundry—what you plan on doing with your laundry when you’re at school—”

“I haven’t thought about it,” Jesse said. He felt her eyes on his face, his downcast face. Her fingers moved nervously about the embroidered pocket of her dress.

“I bought a laundry case so that you can mail your laundry home, Jesse. I thought it would be the best thing, for you to put your soiled laundry in it and mail it home.…”

“All right,” Jesse said.

“It would be so much trouble for you to do it yourself in a laundromat,” she went on quickly, “or to have it done somewhere.… They don’t know how we want things done. They might put too much starch in your shirts. They wouldn’t bother matching your socks together for you.…”

“All right,” Jesse said

“Did you say you were going to Buffalo?”

Jesse looked up miserably. “I think I will.”

“Good, I have some shopping that has to be done. I’ll go with you.”

“But I’m not going to stay long.…”

“We don’t have to stay long. I just have a few things to buy.”

Jesse said nothing.

“But before we leave I have a few things to do,” Mrs. Pedersen said. “I have to telephone my father and see how he is. Then I have a list, a list of things to do.… I’m going through the list one item at a time so that I don’t get confused or nervous.… Can you wait for me? Can you wait? It will only take ten minutes for me to get ready.”

“All right.”

“Only ten minutes, I promise!”

“I’ll wait in the car.”

After she left he seemed to smell, dizzily, the scent of alcohol. Or was he imagining it?

He got his books and his suit coat and went out to the car. He sighed. A twenty-five-mile drive ahead. The entire right side of his body sagged, it felt aged and alarmed. To sit beside Mrs. Pedersen in the car! That distance! To feel her stirring beside him, crowded in the front seat, feeling her fierce, helpless gaze upon the side of his face.…

He waited. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. He leafed through a notebook in which he was taking notes, and his handwriting looked odd to him, the handwriting of a stranger. Maybe he had picked up the wrong notebook by mistake …? But no, it was his notebook. He could not concentrate.… He could already smell Mrs. Pedersen’s presence, beside him in the cramped front seat of his car.…

Dora came out of the side door and said, “Jesse, Mrs. Pedersen asked me to say she’s hurrying fast as she can. She’ll be just another minute.” He thanked Dora and put the key in the ignition. Maybe if he started the engine the car would somehow move forward, he would somehow escape.… Another ten minutes passed. Jesse sat staring out the windshield, his eyes glassy. He could not remember how long he had been waiting. At last Mrs. Pedersen appeared in a rush, carrying a large shopping bag and a straw purse and her coat over one arm. She must have dropped something because she exclaimed and stooped to pick it up. Jesse opened the door for her. He wondered what she was doing with all these things—in the shopping bag there were a jar of cold cream and a hairbrush and a small plastic box of hairpins on top; the bag itself was quite heavy.

Jesse drove out to the highway while Mrs. Pedersen apologized for being so slow.

She began to talk as if making a well-rehearsed speech. She sat with her hands clasped in her lap, each hand gripping the other. Jesse’s head swam. He was certain he could smell whiskey.

“Jesse, I have not thanked you for what you did the other day. For helping me as you did. I am thanking you now.” Both she and Jesse stared straight ahead. “I made a mistake. A bad mistake. If Dr. Pedersen had come home too early … Jesse, I made a mistake but I am not going to make it again. I’ve made many mistakes but I’m not going to make them again. I have come to a crossroads in my life. I have been thinking very seriously. I have been talking to my father and to Reverend
Wieden. I have assessed my life, my past life, and I have come to a certain decision. But I want to thank you for helping me the other day. Hilda and Frederich would never have helped me. They don’t love me. They’re afraid of their father. They don’t love me.” She spoke in rapid, breathy snatches now. “We all live together in the same house, I prepare them three meals a day, I am their mother, I love them in spite of their attitude toward me but … but … I am ready to make a certain decision in my life because I know what my fate must be.…”

What was she talking about?

Jesse yearned for the coolness of the library. The quiet movements of bodies, girls’ bodies, distant from him, the grave serious impersonal silence. He could sit there for hours, absolutely alone. He could read for hours. Alone. Absolutely alone. And he would be safe there as Jesse Pedersen, a boy with a home and a family to return to, a table to sit down at in the evening, when it was safely evening and Dr. Pedersen was home.

Mrs. Pedersen was speaking in a feverish voice: “Jesse, I have made my decision. I spoke to my father. He has known about my … my problem.… He has tried to counsel me. But now he has failed me. He doesn’t understand, he is too old to understand … he keeps asking me what will happen to me, won’t I be ashamed—how will I take care of myself—He doesn’t understand.”

Jesse did not dare to ask her what she meant.

“Jesse, I am not asking for your approval. I don’t want to involve you, just as I do not want to involve my father. He has offered me money but I said no. That would involve him. That would make Dr. Pedersen very angry at him.… I have my own money, I have all the money I need. Here,” she said, lifting her straw purse, “here is everything I need.… I took a taxi to the bank yesterday and got everything I need. I’m ready.”

Jesse drove for another mile before he could speak. Then he said, not looking at her. “What do you mean …?”

“I am leaving my husband.”