Carthage. Joyce Carol Oates
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structure containing the inverted staircases was recognizable as the Mayfields’ sprawling old Colonial house, furniture and wall hangings were recognizable, and the figures were clearly the Mayfields—tall sturdy shock-haired Daddy, Mom with a placid smiling vacuous face, gorgeous Juliet with exaggerated eyes and lips and inky-frizzy-haired Cressida a fierce-frowning child with arms and legs like sticks, half the height of the other figures, a gnome in their midst.
The Mayfield figures were repeated several times, with a comical effect; earnestness, repeated, suggests idiocy. Arlette never looked at Descending and Ascending and Cressida’s other Escher-drawings on the wall without a little shudder of apprehension.
It was easier for Cressida to mock than to admire. Easier for Cressida to detach herself from others, than to attempt to attach herself.
For she’d been hurt, Arlette had to suppose. In ninth grade when Cressida had volunteered to teach in a program called Math Literacy—(in fact, this program had been initiated by Zeno’s mayoral administration in the face of state budget cuts to education)—and after several enthusiastic weekly sessions with middle-school students from “deprived” backgrounds she’d returned home saying with a shamefaced little frown that she wasn’t going back.
Zeno had asked why. Arlette had asked why.
“It was a stupid idea. That’s why.”
Zeno had been surprised and disappointed with Cressida when she refused to explain why she was quitting the program. But Arlette knew there had to be a particular reason and that this reason had to do with her daughter’s pride.
Arlette recalled that something unfortunate had happened in high school, too, related to Cressida’s Escher-fixation. But she’d never known the details.
On Cressida’s desk, which consisted of a wide, smooth-sanded plank and aluminum drawers, put together by Cressida herself, was a laptop (closed), a notebook (closed), small stacks of books and papers. All were neatly arranged as if with a ruler.
Arlette rarely entered her younger daughter’s room except if Cressida was inside, and expressly invited her. She dreaded the accusation of snooping.
It was 4:36 A.M. Too soon after her last attempt to call Cressida’s cell phone for Arlette to call her again.
Instead, she went to Juliet’s room which was next-door.
“Mom?”—Juliet sat up in bed, startled.
“Oh, honey—I’m sorry to wake you . . .”
“No, I’ve been awake. Is something wrong?”
“Cressida isn’t home.”
“Cressida isn’t home!”
It was an exclamation of surprise, not alarm. For Cressida had not ever stayed out so late—so far as her family knew.
“She was at Marcy’s. She should have been home hours ago.”
“I’ve tried her cell phone. But I haven’t called Marcy—I suppose I should.”
“What time is it? God.”
“I didn’t want to disturb them, at such an hour . . .”
Juliet rose from bed, quickly. Since breaking with Brett Kincaid she was often home and in bed early, like a convalescent; but she slept only intermittently, for a few hours, and spent the rest of the night-hours reading, writing emails, surfing the Internet. On her nightstand beside her laptop were several library books—Arlette saw the title Republic of Fear: The Inside Story of Saddam’s Iraq.
They tried to recall: what had Cressida called out to them, when she’d left the house? Nothing out of the ordinary, each was sure.
“She walked to Marcy’s. She must have walked home, then—or . . .”
Arlette’s voice trailed off. Now that Juliet had been drawn into her concern for Cressida, she was becoming more anxious.
“Maybe she’s staying over with Marcy . . .”
“But—she’d have called us, wouldn’t she . . .”
“ . . . she’d never stay overnight there, why on earth? Of course she’d have come home.”
“But she isn’t home.”
“Did you look anywhere other than her room? I know it isn’t likely, but . . .”
“I didn’t want to wake Zeno, you know how excitable he is . . .”
“You called her cell—you said? Should we try again?”
Nighttime cream Juliet wore on her face, on her beautifully soft skin, shone now like oozing oil. Her hair, a fair brown, layered, feathery, was flattened on one side of her head. Between the sisters was an old, unresolved rivalry: the younger’s efforts to thwart and undermine the older’s efforts to be good.
Juliet called her sister from her own cell phone. Again there was no answer.
“I suppose we should call Marcy. But . . .”
“I’d better wake Zeno. He’ll know what to do.”
Arlette entered the darkened bedroom, where Zeno was sleeping. She shook his shoulder, gently. “Zeno? I’m sorry to wake you, but—Cressida isn’t home.”
Zeno’s eyelids fluttered open. There was something touching, vulnerable and poignant in Zeno waking from sleep—he put Arlette in mind of a slumbering bear, perilously wakened from a winter doze.
“It’s going on five A.M. She hasn’t been home all night. I’ve tried to call her, and I’ve looked everywhere in the house . . .”
Zeno sat up. Zeno swung his legs out of bed. Zeno rubbed his eyes, ran his fingers through his tufted hair.
“Well—she’s nineteen years old. She doesn’t have a curfew and she doesn’t have to report to us.”
“But—she was only just going to Marcy’s for dinner. She walked.”
Walked. Now that Arlette had said this, for the second time, a chill came over her.
“ . . . she was walking, at night, alone . . . Maybe someone . . .”
“Don’t catastrophize, Lettie. Please.”
“But—she was alone. I think she must have been alone. We’d better call Marcy.”
Zeno rose from bed with surprising agility. In boxer shorts he wore as pajamas, bristly-haired, flabby in the torso and midriff, he padded barefoot to the bureau, to snatch up his cell phone.
“We’ve tried to call her, Zeno. Juliet and me . . .”
Zeno paid her no heed. He made the call, listened intently, broke the connection and called immediately again.
“She doesn’t answer. Maybe she’s lost the phone. I’m just so terribly worried, if she was walking back home . . . It’s Saturday night, someone might have been driving by . . .”
“I said, Lettie, please—don’t catastrophize. That isn’t helpful.”
Zeno spoke sharply, irritably. He was stepping into a pair of rumpled khaki shorts he’d thrown onto a chair earlier that day.
In Zeno, emotion was justified: in others in his family, it was apt to be excessive. Particularly, Zeno countered his wife’s occasional alarm by classifying it as catastrophizing, hysterical.
Downstairs, the lighted kitchen awaited them like a stage set. Zeno looked up the Meyers’ number in the directory and called it as Arlette and Juliet stood by.
“Hello? Marcy? This is Zeno—Cressida’s father. Sorry to bother you at this hour, but . . .”
Arlette listened eagerly and with mounting dread.
Zeno questioned Marcy for several minutes. Before he hung up, Arlette asked