Lady Oracle

  "I made those other women up," he said sulkily. "There's no one but you."

  "So who leaves the pumpkin cakes?"

  "My mother," he said. I knew this was a lie.

  He'd always lived in his own unwritten biography, but now he started seeing the present as though it was already the past, bandaged in gauzy nostalgia. Every restaurant we ate in he left with a sigh and a backward glance; he spoke of things we'd done the week before as if they were snapshots in some long-buried photograph album. Each of my gestures was petrified as I performed it, each kiss embalmed, as if he was saving things up. I felt like a collectable. "I'm not dead yet," I told him more than once, "so why are you looking at me like that?"

  This was one of his moods. In another he would be openly hostile towards me. He began to take a morbid interest, not in his own newspaper clippings, which weren't numerous, but in mine. He'd cut them out and use them to belabor me.

  "It says here you're a challenge to the male ego."

  "Isn't that silly," I said.

  "But you are a challenge to the male ego," he said.

  "Oh, come on," I said. "Who've I ever challenged?"

  "It says here you're a threat."

  "What the hell do you mean?" I said. I'd been especially nice all afternoon, I felt.

  "You stomp all over people's egos without even knowing you're doing it," he said. "You're emotionally clumsy."

  "If we're going to have this conversation, would you please put on your clothes?" I said. My lower lip was trembling; somehow I couldn't argue with a naked man.

  "See what I mean?" he said. "You're telling me what to do. You're a threat."

  "I am not a threat," I said.

  "If you aren't a threat," he said, "why are you screaming?"

  I began to cry. He put his arms around me, I put my arms around him, oozing tears like an orphan, like an onion, like a slug sprinkled with salt. "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't have a male ego anyway, I probably have the ego of a wombat."

  "I thought we were going to keep it light," I said, between damp snorts.

  "It's light, it's light," he said. "Wait'll it gets heavy. I'm just depressed because it's raining and I don't have any money."

  "Let's go out for some Kentucky Fried," I said, wiping my nose. But he wasn't hungry.

  One rainy afternoon when I arrived at his warehouse, he was waiting for me all dressed up in his cape and a tie I'd never seen before, a Crippled Civilians maroon one with a mermaid on it. He grabbed me by the waist and whirled me around the floor; his eyes sparkled.

  "What is it?" I said when I'd caught my breath. "What's gotten into you?"

  "A surprise," he said. He led me over to the bed: lying on it was a truly grotesque white pancake hat from the fifties, with a feather and a veil.

  "Where did you get that?" I said, wondering what new fantasy had gripped him. The fifties had never been his favorite period.

  "It's your going-away hat," he said. "I got it at the Sally Ann, eighty-nine cents."

  "But what's it for?"

  "Going away, of course," he said, still elated. "I thought we might, you know, go away together. Elope."

  "You must be crazy," I said. "Where would we go?"

  "How about Buffalo?"

  I started to laugh, then saw that he was serious. "That's very sweet of you," I said, "but you know that I can't."

  He wanted me to leave Arthur and move in with him. That's what it amounted to, and finally he admitted it. We sat side by side on the bed, staring at the floor. "I want to live a normal life with you," he said.

  "I don't think we could," I said. "I'm a terrible cook. I burn things."

  "I want to wake up in the morning and eat breakfast with you and read The Globe and Mail"

  "I could come over for breakfast," I said. "A late breakfast."

  "I want to brush your hair."

  I began to snivel. I'd once told him Arthur liked brushing my hair; or used to.

  "What's he got that I haven't got?"

  I didn't know. But I didn't want him to spoil things, I didn't want him to become gray and multi-dimensional and complicated like everyone else. Was every Heathcliff a Linton in disguise? What did I want, adventure or security, and which of them offered what? Perhaps neither of them offered either, they both wanted me to offer these things, and once more I was deficient. The Royal Porcupine lay with his head against my stomach, waiting for the answer.

  "I don't know," I said. "It isn't that."

  He sat up again. "That's the trouble with you, you have no motives. Don't you know how dangerous that is? You're like an out-of-control school bus."

  "I don't mean to be," I said. To make up for it, I bought him a bottle of One-A-Day vitamin pills and a pair of socks and dusted off his stuffed animals. I even gave him my fox, the one that had been Aunt Lou's. This was a real gift: I valued it. Once it would have delighted him, but he barely glanced at it.

  "At least you could tell him about us," he said. "Sometimes I think you're ashamed of me."

  But I drew the line at that. "I can't," I said, "it would ruin everything. I love you."

  "You're afraid to take a chance on me," he said mournfully. "I can see that. I'm not much now, I admit it, but think of the potential!"

  "I like you the way you are," I said, but he couldn't believe me. It wasn't that I didn't love him. I did, in a peculiar way, but I knew I couldn't live with him. For him, reality and fantasy were the same thing, which meant that for him there was no reality. But for me it would mean there was no fantasy, and therefore no escape.

  The next time I stepped out of the freight elevator, there was an ambush waiting for me. The Royal Porcupine was there, but he was no longer the Royal Porcupine. He'd cut his hair short and shaved off his beard. He was standing in the middle of the floor, no cape, no cane, no gloves; just a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that said Honda on it. He was merely Chuck Brewer; had he always been, underneath his beard? He looked plundered.

  "My God," I said, almost screamed. "What did you do that for?"

  "I killed him," Chuck said. "He's over with, he's finished."

  I started to cry. "Oh, I forgot these," he said. He ripped down his picture of the Queen, then his dynamite poster, and threw them onto the pile he'd made of his costumes.

  "What about your animals?" I said stupidly.

  "I'm getting rid of them," he said. "They aren't any good to me now."

  I was staring at his chin; I'd never seen it before. "Now will you move in?" he said. "It doesn't have to be here, we could get a house."

  It was horrible. He'd thought that by transforming himself into something more like Arthur he could have Arthur's place; but by doing this he'd murdered the part of him that I loved. I scarcely knew how to console the part that remained. Without his beard, he had the chin of a junior accountant.

  I hated myself for thinking this. I felt like a monster, a large, blundering monster, irredeemably shallow. How could I care about his chin at a time like this? I threw my arms about him. I couldn't do what he wanted, it was all wrong.

  "I can tell you aren't going to," he said, disengaging my arms. "Well, I guess there's only one thing to do. How about a double suicide? Or maybe I could shoot you and then jump off the Toronto Dominion Centre with your body in my arms." He managed a white smile, but he didn't fool me. He was completely serious.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The freight elevator ponderously descended. I imagined the Royal Porcupine pounding down three flights of stairs, shedding his clothes, to confront me on the ground floor, stark naked; but when the door grated open he wasn't there. I ran three blocks to the Kentucky Fried Chicken, ducked inside and ordered a Family Bucket. Then I took a taxi back to the apartment. I would tell all, I would cry. I would be forgiven, I would never do it again, if only Arthur would pardon me and take me back to safety.

  I climbed the stairs to the apartment and flung open the door, breathing hard. I was ready for the scene. It wouldn't be just a confession, it wou
ld be an accusation too: why had Arthur driven me to it, what did he propose to do about it, shouldn't we discuss our relationship to find out what had gone wrong? For some complicated and possibly sadistic reason of his own he'd allowed me to become involved with a homicidal maniac, and it was time he knew about it. I didn't ask much, I only wanted to be loved. I only wanted some human consideration. Was that so terrible, was that so impossible, was I some kind of mutation?

  Arthur was watching television. His back was toward me, and the nape of his neck was vulnerable. I noticed that he needed a haircut, and this hurt me. He was like a child, whole in his beliefs and trusts. What was I doing?

  "Arthur," I said, "there's something I have to discuss with you."

  He said, without turning, "Could you wait till it's over?"

  I sat down on the floor beside his chair and opened the Family Bucket. Silently I offered it to him. "How can you eat that American crap?" he said, but he took a breast and began to chew. He was watching the Olympic doubles figure-skating championships; once he would watch only the news, but now it was anything he could get, situation comedies, hockey games, police series, talk shows. The television set had vertical foldover on the lower third of the screen, so that the people on the talk shows had four hands, like Indian gods and goddesses, and the chase sequences on the police shows appeared upside down, with two sets of cops and two sets of robbers; but Arthur wouldn't get it fixed because of the expense. He said he knew someone who could fix it.

  The Austrian skaters, in long white sleeves, the girl in a dark bodice, glided backwards around the rink at incredible speed, completely synchronized. Each of them had four legs. They turned and the girl flew up into the air and posed, upside down, two-headed, while the man held her with one arm. Down she came - "Her right foot touched," said the commentator - and they both fell, multiplying as they hit the ice. They got up and continued their routine, but it wasn't quite the same. Canada's pair fell down too, although they were daring at first.

  The Fat Lady skated out onto the ice. I couldn't help myself. It was one of the most important moments in my life, I should have been able to keep her away, but out she came in a pink skating costume, her head ornamented with swan's-down. With her was the thinnest man in the world. She smiled at the crowd, nobody smiled back, they didn't believe what they were seeing because she was whirling around the rink with exceptional grace, spinning like a top on her tiny feet, then the thin man lifted her and threw her and she floated up, up, she hung suspended ... her secret was that although she was so large, she was very light, she was hollow, like a helium balloon, they had to keep her tethered to her bed or she'd drift away, all night she strained at the ropes....

  There's something I have to tell you, I thought of saying during the commercial. But Arthur was rooting through the Family Bucket for an unconsumed piece, his fingers were covered with grease, and he had a little piece of chicken on his chin. Tenderly I wiped it off. This was a defenseless moment: how could I violate it? Arthur would need dignity.

  A famous figure-skater praised margarine, unconvincingly, her eyes hypnotized by the cue cards. Then the competition came back on. The Fat Lady was still there, bobbing against the ceiling. The U.S. team scooted across the bottom of the screen like a centipede, but no one paid any attention, they were all distracted by the huge pink balloon that bobbed with such poor taste above their heads The Fat Lady kicked her skates feebly; her tights and the huge moon of her rump were visible. Really it was an outrage. "They've gone for the harpoon gun," I heard the commentator say. They were going to shoot her down in cold blood, explode her, despite the fact that she had now burst into song....

  Why am I doing this? I thought, Who's doing this to me? "I'm going to bed," I told Arthur. I couldn't act, I couldn't even think straight; at any moment the Royal Porcupine might come hammering at the door, or scream some terrible message over the phone, the moment before he jumped, and I was paralyzed, there was nothing I could do. I could only wait for the ax to fall and, knowing him, it wouldn't even be an ax, it would be a rubber turkey from some joke shop; that or a huge explosion. He had no sense of proportion. Russia won the title, again.

  The next morning I got the first of the phone calls. No voice, nothing, though I said hello three times. Just some breathing and a click. I knew it had to be him, but I was surprised by his lack of originality. The second phone call came at six, and the third one at nine. The next day I got a letter from him, or I felt it had to be from him. It was just a blank sheet of paper with a little woodcut of Death, holding a scythe, and the caption, MAY I HAVE THIS WALTZ? The letters and words had been cut from the Yellow Pages and pasted on; Death was from a magazine. I crumpled it up and threw it into the garbage. He'd certainly gone to work fast, but I wasn't going to let him see he was getting to me.

  What I really expected was an anonymous letter to Arthur. I started censoring his mail, though to do it I had to get up early and make it to the downstairs hallway in time to snatch the mail as it came through the letter slot. I'd ponder the envelopes, and if the contents weren't obvious I would save them to steam open later. I did this for five days, but nothing happened. The phone calls continued. I didn't know whether Arthur got any; if so, he didn't mention it.

  Everything depended on whether the Royal Porcupine wanted me back - if so, he wouldn't tell Arthur - whether he wanted to kill me, which I doubted, or whether he just wanted revenge. I thought of phoning to ask him; he might tell me the truth if I got him at the right moment. I should never have given him this power, the power to ruin my life; for it wasn't yet completely ruined, something could still be salvaged. I hinted to Arthur that it might be a nice change for us to move to another city.

  On the sixth day I got another letter. The address was typewritten; there was no stamp, it must've been delivered by hand. Inside there was another cut-out message: OPEN THE DOOR. I waited half an hour and opened it. On the doorstep there was a dead porcupine with an arrow stuck into it. A label attached to the arrow read JOAN.

  "Oh, for Christ's sake," I said. If the landlord, or Arthur, had found it first there would have been an uproar or at least an inquisition. I had to get rid of it in a hurry. It was a large porcupine, with extensive wounds, and it was already beginning to rot. I pulled it to the side of the porch and dumped it among the hydrangeas, hoping that none of the neighbors was watching. Then I went upstairs, got a green plastic Glad Bag, stuffed the porcupine into it, and managed to get it into the garbage can labeled "Tenants" in the hinged bin at the back. I pictured the Royal Porcupine unfreezing all his animals, one by one, and leaving them on my doorstep. He had a lot of them, they'd last for weeks.

  I felt he was going too far. In the afternoon I went out to a pay phone and called him. "Chuck, is that you?" I said when he answered.

  "Who is this," he said, "Myrna?"

  "You know bloody well it's not Myrna, whoever she may be," I said. "It's Joan, and I want you to know I don't think you're funny at all."

  "What do you mean?" he said. He really did sound surprised.

  "You know," I said. "Your little notes. I suppose you thought you were being very clever, cutting the letters out of the Yellow Pages like that so I wouldn't know it was you."

  "No, I didn't," he said. "I mean, what notes? I've never sent you any notes."

  "What about that thing you left on my doorstep this morning? I suppose that wasn't one of your precious mangled animals."

  "What are you talking about?" he said. "You must be crazy. I haven't done a thing."

  "And you can stop phoning and breathing at me over the phone, too."

  "I swear to God I haven't called you once. Has someone been calling you?"

  I felt defeated. If he was lying, that meant he was going to continue. If he wasn't, then who was doing it? "Chuck, be honest," I said.

  "I thought I asked you not to call me that," he said coldly. "I haven't done anything to you. Why should I? You told me it's over. Okay, I was mad at the time, but I thought about it
, and if you say it's over, it's over. You know me, here today, gone tomorrow. Easy come, easy go. Why should I worry?"

  I was hurt that he was taking it so calmly. "So that's really all I meant to you," I said.

  "Look, you were the one who backed out, not me. If you don't want to live with me, what do you expect me to do? Stick my head in the oven?"

  "Maybe I was wrong," I said, "maybe we should talk about it."

  "Why prolong the agony?" he said. "Besides, I've got company."

  Then he hung up on me. I slammed down the phone and jiggled the coin return; I felt I should definitely get my dime back, he owed me that. But from the black machine, no satisfaction.

  I ran back to the apartment, closed myself into the bedroom, got out my typewriter, and shut my eyes. A tall man in a cloak, that was what I needed. All the time I'd been with the Royal Porcupine I hadn't written a word. Was this why my creatures seemed more real than usual, nearer to me, charged with an energy greater than I gave them?

  But it was no good; I couldn't stop time, I could shut nothing out.

  That night there was another call, and the next day another note: COME INTO THE FUNERAL PARLOR, with a picture of a spider glued to it. The day after that, a dead bluejay on the doorstep. That night I thought I heard someone climbing the fire escape.

  I began to hesitate before picking up the phone. I thought of getting a shrill whistle, the kind you were supposed to use on obscene phone callers. Once I screamed "Stop it!" into the phone before realizing it was only Sam. I wasn't afraid, exactly; I still thought of it as a prolonged and revengeful practical joke, and the Royal Porcupine - for I was still convinced he was the one - probably thought of it as a work of art. Maybe he was taking pictures of me opening the door and finding his smelly little tokens of esteem, maybe he'd put the prints on exhibition. I thought about going over to his warehouse and trying to reason with him....

  The phone rang. I let it ring three times, then picked it up, prepared for the breathing and maybe even a threatening laugh. "Hello," I said.

  "This is Joan Delacourt?" A man's voice, thick and odd somehow.

  "Yes," I said automatically, before I'd had time to think about this use of my maiden name. Everyone called me Joan Foster now.