The idea of captivity was not a new one to Ray. He had read so many animal books when he was a kid in Brooklyn, and the plot was always roughly the same: boy finds wounded wild animal, nurses it back to health and keeps it as a household pet; soon the animal becomes unhappy and listless, and the boy’s father tells him, in a really intense father-son discourse, that the animal needs to go back to its natural habitat. So the boy tearfully sets “Bandit” free, and the book draws to a close.
There was supposed to be nothing as good as freedom. But what if your natural environment was captivity to begin with? Where did that leave you? Certainly the small house on Cobb’s Lane was oppressive, with its peeling paint and leftover air of mourning. But even so, it served as a sanctuary. Ray could sit in the den with a glass of vodka and a plate of hot food, listening to the sounds of the ocean and not having to talk to anyone.
Helen must feel that way about the house too, he thought, or else she wouldn’t spend all her time there. She went into town as infrequently as she could. Being recognized as the mother of Lucy Ascher was only a problem during the summer, when the season was in full swing. Then people often turned and looked at her when she went shopping in the local supermarket. They had seen the photographs in the middle of
Lucy Ascher: Portrait of a Dreamer
, the critical biography that had come out a few months before, and knew that the Aschers still lived in Southampton. There was a full-page picture in the book of Helen and Ray with Lucy sitting between them. It was taken the afternoon she had received a special award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the spring before her death. Helen and Ray were wearing light-colored clothing, and Lucy was wearing a heavy, dark dress. They made a striking group.
Nobody ever actually bothered Helen or Ray when they went into town; they just looked, and nudged each other and whispered. After a while you got used to it. Even so, it was good to have a place of refuge, and the house provided that. Helen carried this to an extreme; she stayed indoors and did nothing all day. She had become useless. Lately she had taken to collecting supermarket coupons and to stringing leaves of dried beach grass into little ornaments that littered the mantelpiece. “Why don’t you get out more?” Ray suggested once. “Physical exercise feels good. I read somewhere that it can help make you less depressed.”
They decided they would start jogging the very next morning. They woke at sunrise and dressed together in the dark
room. “This had better be worth it,” she said in a groggy voice as she bent to tie the shoelace of her Nikes.
They ran side by side along the beach, kicking up sand behind them. At first it was easy; the morning air was wet and cold, and Ray inhaled deeply, feeling as though he were slowly being purified. The house was set on a long strip of sand, and they decided they would jog until the beach ended. “How are you doing?” he called to her periodically over the screech of gulls.
“Just fine,” she answered, looking straight ahead. She ran stiffly, barely moving her arms. Her breathing started to come with effort soon, although she seemed to be trying not to let it show. She breathed through her nose only, the proper way, but her nostrils flared with each new, labored intake of air. “Do you want to stop and rest awhile?” he asked her once when they were approaching a large piece of driftwood that would have served as a nice bench.
She shook her head resolutely and did not say anything. Ray was barely winded at all. He was in fairly good shape for a man as heavy as he. It had something to do with his wrestling coach back at City College, who always insisted that team members get some sort of extra physical activity each day. It took Ray some time to decide what it was he should do. He immediately ruled out swimming because he was embarrassed by his paleness, and the harsh white lights over the pool made him feel all the more exposed. He ended up lifting weights, coming to the gym each day an hour before his first class, in order to work out. His arms became corded, and his chest began to feel more dense. After college he continued to lift
heavy things, liking the way the veins in his arms became prominent when he strained to pick up a color TV, or a carton of textbooks for his class.
As he ran with Helen he felt he could continue at the same pace for several miles. He almost wished the beach didn’t end after the yellow house. A feeling of confidence rushed through him, and he began to run faster. “Is this too much for you?” he yelled to Helen, and she shook her head, even though it was clear that she was having a hard time of it. As long as she didn’t complain, he would not stop. His legs moved with precision, like well-oiled machine parts. He could almost hear them make a whirring sound.
It could not last. They were still going along well, at an even, quick trot, when Ray began to feel out of breath. He tried to ignore the feeling, but he couldn’t. Sometimes in the early morning he would wake with a full bladder but be too tired to get out of bed. He would fall back into sleep and dream that he had gotten up and urinated in a great arc. He would wake again seconds later and realize that his bladder was still full. You could not fool the body.
He glanced at Helen and saw that she had begun to breathe through her mouth. It was wide open and she was gasping like a caught fish. They both slowed down at the same time, and their steps, without the aid of speed, turned clumsy. They began to kick up sand in huge, careless sprays. Ray knew he would have to stop, and just as he realized this, he caught sight of the young couple from down the road. The Wassermans were jogging gracefully toward Ray and Helen, wearing identical sweat suits, royal blue with gold racing stripes lining the
sides. Their faces were vibrant and flushed, and they were ribbing each other playfully as they ran.
“Ha!” she called to him. “You can’t do much more, Mike!”
“Oh, yeah?” he called back. “Let’s see who sticks it out longer!”
Then they laughed and hugged each other for a moment, still moving. They soon passed Ray and Helen and smiled and waved and called out “Good morning!” The Wassermans were thin and blond and graceful. Ray thought they looked like Hitler’s ideal of Aryan youth. As he watched the couple go by, he suddenly felt hopeless about his own life. He looked over at Helen and saw that she was openly wheezing. They were both moving at an embarrassingly slow pace now. “Oh,” he said at last, reaching for her arm, “let’s stop.”
They collapsed on the beach, a few inches from the water. The Wassermans were almost completely out of sight now. The footprints they had left behind in the damp sand were delicate and unassuming, like the tracks birds leave. Ray felt heavy and awful and, most of all, old. When you reached your fifties, things moved faster but took a lot more effort. If your body didn’t slow you down, your thoughts did. Just the other night he had been brushing his teeth over the sink, and in the middle he had started to think about Lucy and the time when there were three Aschers and he and Helen had loved each other fiercely. He didn’t realize it, but he stopped brushing his teeth and began to daydream about the early years of his marriage. He was standing there motionless for several minutes, holding his dripping brush poised over the basin, his mouth still slathered with toothpaste, when Helen passed by the bathroom and saw him.
“Ray,” she said. “What are you doing?” He had come instantly to life again when she spoke, back to the sorry life that was his own. He rinsed out his mouth and went to bed.
He came to expect that as he got older there would be many more moments of this kind of stoppage. He experienced one of them as he lay sprawled out on the beach with Helen, trying to breathe. It was a long while until they were both recovered enough to get up and start back toward home. They walked slowly. Ray still faltered and wheezed, and Helen had a stitch in her side. They supported each other as they made their way to the house.
People were always extolling the virtues of growing old alongside someone you love. If this was what it entailed, Ray wanted no part of it. He had too much pride to display his inertia to another person, even to Helen. He would rather grow old alone, in some seedy hotel. This was only another one of his many dismal fantasies; he knew that in reality he would never leave her. He loved Helen, and besides, he figured that an inert personality such as his could not make major changes. There would be no flux in Ray’s life other than the inevitable slow process of aging. He would stay where he was, alone with his wife, with the sea thundering outside.
—
C
laire fit into this life of stagnation with ease. If she had been an average girl—a sweet, well-adjusted college kid looking to make a few dollars so she and a friend could go hear some rock concert—he would have pulled her aside and said, “Look, you don’t want to work for us. We’re not happy people.”
But he understood at once that she wasn’t a happy person either, so he said nothing.
As the days passed, Ray realized that he liked having Claire around. He would forget that she was there, and then, as he went into the kitchen to have his breakfast, he would see her at the sink, unloading the dishwasher from last night’s dinner. “Hello,” she would say to him, never “Good morning.” He sensed that she was one of those people who, when someone said “Good morning” to her, would reply, “What’s so good about it?” And she would mean it. At nineteen, Claire Danziger looked as though her life were over.
Lucy had looked that way most of the time. Even in sleep her face had been tragic. He had come into Lucy’s room late one night because he thought he had left his reading glasses there, and he had seen her and known then that she never relaxed. Her mouth and eyes were screwed tight, dampness matted tendrils of hair to her neck. Ray had felt a kind of paternal ache, but he could not express it. Lucy would not allow it; she always kept herself at a safe distance from both her parents. She had learned early to be independent. Once when she was a very little girl, Ray had watched as she tried to teach herself to tie her shoes. Her small hands fumbled with the thick red laces, and finally she created some semblance of a bow. At the age of four she had showed a real desire to read. She would take down one of Ray and Helen’s books from the shelf in the den and pretend to read, whispering made-up words as she ran her finger along the page and squinted her eyes in a good imitation of concentration.
So they pushed her ahead, indulging her with the
independence she wanted. On her door was a glow-in-the-dark sign that read: “Keep Out! This Means You!” They smiled when they saw it and allowed her many hours of solitude. She had no social graces at all. She did not know how to talk with anyone, how to share things. “Leave me alone,” she would say whenever her parents touched her.
Her aloofness was a constant state, but sometimes when her guard was down she let her parents see that she was in pain. She would sit and tremble and refuse to talk about what was troubling her. “What can the matter be?” Ray and Helen would ask each other. They telephoned Lucy’s fourth-grade teacher every few weeks to find out if perhaps something upsetting had happened in school to make Lucy miserable. No, the teacher always patiently reported, everything went smoothly that day. The children had learned how plants get the water they need in order to grow. They had dipped stalks of celery into shallow dishes of red ink and had observed later in the morning how the ink had begun to climb up the pale veins in the stalk. Lucy had taken part in the experiment like all of the other children. She had not seemed troubled. The teacher told Ray and Helen not to worry, that Lucy was merely shy, that she would soon emerge from her shell.
But the shell was hard—calcareous, Ray thought, like a mollusk’s. Such a tough, thick shell to protect such a soft, slight interior. You could dissect a mollusk; you could splay it open on a slide and look at it for hours. You could delve into the very heart of its softness and see what was there. It would make life easier if people were like that, if you could try to figure them out while they were in an open, yielding state. Most people
were born with self-protection devices that didn’t allow you to go near, to explore. It had been that way with Lucy. It seemed to be that way with the girl Claire. She was completely closed off, snug inside her shell. She stood in the kitchen early each morning, putting away plates and glasses and silver, wordless except for a brief greeting. She would speak, he guessed, when she had something to say.
But he did not want to wait. He was suddenly curious about her, without understanding why. Maybe it was the father in him—he had always been curious when Lucy brought a friend to the house, which was not very often. “So,” he would say, “you’re in Lucy’s class. Do you enjoy school? What’s your favorite subject?” The child would stare back blankly.
Maybe it was the father in him, and maybe it was the scientist. As far as he was concerned, everything unfolded back to that little mollusk. What a wonderful cracking sound when your thumbs dug in to pull back the flaps of the opaque shell like a tiny curtain—the sound of discovery.
Dear Claire,
Where are you when we need you? It’s getting to be that time of year again—the heart of winter, when, as you once said, “the lemming inside me” takes over. I really do feel depressed these days. Life at Swarthmore is as grim as ever. None of my classes are worth my time, with the possible exception of modern dance, which I’m not even getting credit for. For some reason, I actually
like
being around those snot-nosed danseuses, the ones with the really long braids and sucked-in cheeks and rosin all over their hands from hours spent gripping the barre. Do you remember that girl Francesca who lived on my floor last year, the one who drank liquid protein all the time and went around freshman week telling everyone how she’d gotten accepted to the Joffrey but had decided to go to Swarthmore instead, so she could be a more “whole person”?
She’s in this class, and she’s been whispering to everyone how weird I am, and how weird you and Laura are, too. It seems that everyone knows you’ve left school. It’s the great mystery on campus, what happened to you. Everyone expects us to be in threes all the time.
I mean it when I say we need you.
I
need you, at any rate. I’m getting a little worried about Laura. She’s as depressed as always, but something’s different. On Friday I found her sitting out in the snow very late at night. We were supposed to meet to see
Psycho,
and she never showed up. I looked around for a long time, but I couldn’t find her. Later that night I went out to get a Tab, and she was just sitting there, in a small bank of snow in front of my dorm, waiting for me. She swore that she’d been sitting there for over an hour, but I’m pretty sure she was exaggerating. Wouldn’t she have turned blue and started to get frostbite if she’d been there that long? I think she just wanted attention, which I immediately gave her. She came inside and we talked for a few hours. She seemed really spaced-out, and I’m not sure what’s going on. I wish you had been here; you would have known what to do.
I saw Julian Gould the other day. I was on my way to the library and was carrying a huge stack of books on the Enlightenment, and he came sprinting up to me from all the way across the campus. I think he must wear a Geiger counter around his neck; he always seems to conveniently show up whenever I come outside. He was Mr. Congeniality, and he practically grabbed the books from my hands. He asked the same questions about you all over again, like when were you
planning on coming back to school, and did you mention him at all in your letter to me and Laura. When I refused to tell him anything, he asked if we could play Twenty Questions about you, and then he would leave me alone. It was odd—I felt sorry for him. He seems very lonely. As I stood there refusing to give away any information, I suddenly lost sight of what this is all about anyway. It seemed so bizarre that I have to cover for you. I mean, I’m glad that you took this step—I don’t think I would have the courage to do the same thing—but I wish you would finish up soon.
I wanted to know a couple of things that you neglected to mention in your letter. The obvious one is this: Do the Aschers know why you’re there yet, and if so, how do they feel about it? I saw a photograph of them in that fat biography of Lucy that’s in the bookstore, and I thought they looked really formidable. Are they? Your letter was full of gaps.
I’m awed that all of this has happened so easily. I was positive you would be back at school a day or so after you left. I know that Laura and I encouraged you to do this, but frankly, I had no idea that it would turn out to be an extended thing. I’m sure that if I had approached Aurelia Plath the day I sat and watched her from across the street, she would have been able to tell right away what I was doing there, and she would have turned and walked away from me. My face always gives me away. Yours does too, you know. Are you absolutely sure the Aschers don’t know what you’re doing there? Maybe they really do, but are just being silent about it. Even so, I can’t imagine why they would just let you stay
like that, with no references, no experience, no anything, except charm. You never cease to amaze me, Claire.
I have to end this letter soon, Laura’s about to come over for a meeting. There’s something lifeless about the sessions when you’re not at them. That time before Christmas, when you were with Julian all the time, our sessions just dragged without you. Laura resented the fact that you didn’t think it was important to show up, but I felt more sad than angry. However different Laura and I feel, I think we both agree that something basic is missing when you’re not here. At our meeting last night, neither one of us wanted to start things off. It was like the beginning of
Marty:
“What do you want to do?” . . . “I don’t know, what do
you
want to do?” It was very late, and for some reason the heat in the building was fucked up, and the room was freezing cold. We sat on the floor, like always, and the candle was flickering and sputtering very low. I think it has only about an hour of burning time left in it. So we sat there, and I kept thinking about my Intellectual History class I’d have to wake up at ten for the next morning, and I started wishing the whole meeting was over and done with and that I could just go to sleep, like a normal person. There was no spark at all to the session. Finally Laura started reading from Sexton’s
Transformations.
It was really fine, but I didn’t have it in me to listen, and I think Laura could tell. We ended very early. When I woke up this morning I actually felt rested—something I haven’t felt in a long time. It was wonderful; I didn’t even have to take a nap this afternoon.
Don’t worry about anyone finding out where you are, I’m not telling. And yes, I do think you should inform the registrar.
If you don’t, they’ll think something happened to you and will call Security to open your door with a master key, and everyone will crowd around in the hall, expecting to see you dangling from the rafters . . .
Seriously, though, please take care of yourself out there. I know you explained the situation very plainly in your letter, and it all sounded kosher, but I think that something eventually has to give. Write me immediately.
Love,
Naomi
Dear Dear Claire,
Oh, tell me already! The three of you are getting a great big kick out of this whole thing, aren’t you? In order to get this letter to you, I have to go through complicated channels. I’ve been instructed to meet Naomi and Laura in front of the library at noon on Wednesday. They’ll put the address on the envelope after I walk away—I only have to put on a stamp. I’m suspicious of them steaming the letter open and giggling over it—it all makes me sick. So in order not to make a fool of myself I’m keeping this letter short and sane. Only know that underneath these words is my concern for you and, despite myself, my love. Please, Claire.
Julian
Dearest Claire,
Your father and I had a long talk the other day after we got your letter. In fact, as you can probably guess, we have not stopped talking about the whole matter. I wasn’t going to write to you, but I changed my mind. After all, I am your mother, and I should let you know my feelings. You are a young woman now and are getting too old for this kind of rebellion. When you were in high school we just ignored you, because things were difficult around the house and your guidance counselor said you would grow out of it soon enough. I’m finding it hard to just keep ignoring it now. No, I’m not going to force you to come home or anything like that. You are an adult in many ways. I just think you should be aware of the other factors involved. That college of yours is not cheap, even with the financial-aid package you are getting. But the money is going to be taken away from you in a jiffy as soon as the financial-aid office gets wind of what you are doing. They will give your money to someone who deserves it more, someone who knows enough to stay in school for the semester. If you were having personal problems you should have gone to see the school psychologist. Your father and I would not have objected to that. I don’t really understand what you are getting out of living in these people’s home. You always carried things too far, even when you were little. All three of you kids were like that. I have never understood your fascination for this poetess, and I guess I never will. I’m trying to keep an open mind about this, but I have to say that I think something has gone wrong. When the Kahns’ son Bobby overdosed on heroin a few years ago and had to go to Phoenix House, I knew it had to
do with the parents, who were always fighting and throwing things and the neighbors complained all the time. He was a troubled boy and yes his parents made him that way. I know life has not been easy since Seth passed away, but I think we have tried our hardest to remain a family. Incidentally, your sister Joan called to tell us that she is getting married. The wedding is planned for the spring, and her fiancé is someone named Steven Blackwing who is an Indian as you can guess from his name. Your father and I cannot decide whether or not we will go to the wedding. Airfare is so expensive, and we know nothing about this man, except that he makes turquoise jewelry for a living and that he and Joan plan on staying on the reservation after they get married. Your sister’s chore is to bring fresh water to the Indians in buckets each day. How’s that for a job. Needless to say, we are not thrilled, and right now I feel under a lot of stress. It’s not that I stay up nights worrying about you. I trust that you are being well fed and that these are decent people, since that’s what you told me. But I think you should take a good, hard look at your life and try to figure out what is really best. I am getting too old to check up on my children all the time. The time has come for me to start enjoying my life. Tonight your father and I are going to see Dionne Warwick at the Westbury Music Fair, and I am looking forward to it. It’s theater-in-the-round, so all of the seats are good. I’m going to end this letter now and start to make dinner. I have nothing more to add, except that I hope you will think about what I have said.
Love,
Mother
Dear Claire,
What do you mean by “I feel as though the ghost of Lucy Ascher is wandering through the rooms of the house”? Do you seriously mean that, or are you just being your usual metaphorical self? Don’t tell me you’ve started to believe in the supernatural. I don’t think I could take it. One of the things I’ve always liked best about you is your straightforward, no-shit view of the world, and I couldn’t stand it if you came back to school brandishing a deck of tarot cards and sounding like that woman Sybil Leek, who claims she’s a witch.
From the way you described it, I
do
think your mother’s response was totally weird and uncalled for, but I have to tell you, if we’re going to keep things honest and open, that I’m getting a little worried about you being out there, and I think that maybe you
should
consider coming home one of these days. I hope you won’t hate me forever for saying that. Your mother sounds as though she’s really angry with you for letting her down or something, but I think she’s worried, too. I wish you would hurry and purge yourself at the Aschers’ and then come back to school. I’ll take you out for a big reunion dinner—lobster tails and Baskin-Robbins, your favorites.
You know me, always worrying about everyone else. Remember last year I typed up Laura’s entire English paper—seventeen pages, with two pages worth of footnotes—because she was really overworked and I thought she would collapse if she had to stay up and type, and then
I
ended up getting a mediocre grade on my French final because I didn’t get a chance to study for it. So there you are. I’m worried about
Laura once again, and I wanted to ask your advice, if you have any to give. I think I wrote you about her in my last letter—about how she spent the evening out in the snow (or said she did) and then acted really weird and depressed when we went inside. Anyway, things have only gotten worse since then. I don’t understand it; I can’t see that anything has happened in her life recently to affect her this way. The other day when I asked her what was up, she just closed her eyes and said in this sarcastic voice, “The human condition.” She hasn’t been going to her classes lately. She has this really intensive seminar with Miller—you know the one—and last week she seemed to be really excited about it. They’re reading
The Magic Mountain
now, which has always been one of her favorite books. You know, all that heavy Germanic lust and angst. The other day I walked by her classroom and saw that she wasn’t there, so I went back to her dorm and she was lying in bed with her clothes on, the same ones she had worn the day before, and she seemed really out of it. I asked her if she’d forgotten about her class, and she didn’t even know what I was talking about. It took her about five minutes to orient herself. I asked her what was wrong, and she wouldn’t tell me. She said she didn’t think she could trust me anymore, and I have to admit I was pretty hurt by that. You know how close we’ve been. At any rate, I asked her how she felt about talking to the school shrink, and she shrugged and said it didn’t matter to her, so I called up and made an appointment for Friday. I just hope she’ll go. If she keeps acting this way do you think I should press the issue, or just leave her alone until she feels like confiding in me?
It is now almost nine o’clock at night and I haven’t done a damn thing work-wise this evening. I have to finish up this letter and then get over to the library, where tons of glorious reserve reading are just waiting to be devoured. Please come home when you’re ready to, which I hope is soon. I know that part of this feeling is selfishness (I’m lonely!) but most of it is worry. God, what do you do all day other than clean out their toilet bowl and change their sheets? Do they know your real reason for being there yet?
Listen, it only took me a single afternoon to get my entire Plath fill, so why should it take you so long to get your fill of Lucy Ascher? Don’t be greedy. Just think of all the other “death girls,” to coin a Swarthmore phrase, absolutely dying to sneak their way into the Aschers’ house and poke around. Come back to school and give someone else a chance.
I
miss you, Laura misses you, and Julian misses you. He looks like a lost dog without you, Claire. I told him for about the millionth time you were fine, which I hope is the truth. You know, I’m actually starting to find him a little appealing. So get out of that house as soon as you can, before that ghost goes to your head. And in the meantime, take care of yourself.