The Accursed. Joyce Carol Oates

pangs of childhood, that increased his sense of excited unease and dread.

      It was a household of females. So often, he could not breathe.

      Yet this afternoon he was allowed unimpeded to ascend to the dim-lit atmosphere of the master bedroom where, in the privacy of his step-in closet, he was free to select a pill, a second pill, and a third pill from his armamentarium of pills, medicines, and “tonics”—that rivaled his mother’s armamentarium of old.

      Woodrow’s dear mother! How he missed her, in his weak moods especially.

      She could guide him. She could instruct him in what course to take, in this matter of his nemesis Dean West.

      As to the matter of the ugly Klan lynching—Mrs. Wilson would not have spoken of so obscene an event, if she had even heard of it.

      For there are some things too ugly for women to know of. Genteel Christian women, at least.

      A man’s responsibility is to shield them. No good can come of them knowing all that we must know.

      Woodrow’s Southern relatives would have pointed out that mob violence against Negroes was a consequence of the abolition of slavery—blame, if there be blame, must be laid where it is due, with the abolitionists and war-mongers among the Republicans.

      The defeat of the Confederacy was the defeat of—a way of civilization that was superior to its conqueror’s.

      Hideous, what Yaeger Ruggles had revealed to him!—he who had liked the young man so much, and had, precipitously perhaps, appointed him a Latin preceptor.

      That appointment, Dr. Wilson would have to rethink.

      And perhaps too, he must have a private conversation with Reverend Shackleton, head of the Princeton Theological Seminary.

      Unfair! And very crude! The charges Yaeger Ruggles had brought against him.

      In such times of distress it was Woodrow’s usual routine to soak a compress in cold water, lie on his bed and position the compress over his aching eyes. Soon then he felt a shuddering voluptuous surrender to—he knew not what.

      The Bog Kingdom. Bidding him enter! Ah, enter!

      There, all wishes are fulfilled. The more forbidden, the more delicious.

      He had not had the energy to undress. Only his black-polished shoes had been removed. Carefully placed side by side on the carpet.

      So unmoving Woodrow was in sleep, he hardly risked rumpling his white cotton shirt, his vest and neatly pressed trousers. So still did he sleep, at such times, he did not risk sweating and dampening his clothing.

      Yet, his thoughts raged like hornets.

      Never can I tell Ellen. The poor woman would be distraught, appalled—the deceptive young “cousin” has come into our house, at my invitation; he has sat at my dining room table, as my guest; he has exchanged conversations with my dear daughters . . .

      Now the full horror of the revelation washed over Woodrow—the danger in which he’d put, in all ignorance, his Margaret, his Jessie, and his Eleanor.

      2.

      It was a secret late-night meeting on the very eve of Ash Wednesday, recorded in no document except, in code, in the diary of Woodrow Wilson for March 1905.*

      It was, one might say, a clandestine meeting. For so Woodrow Wilson, troubled in spirit, considered it.

      I will implore him. I will humble myself, and beg for help.

      I am not proud—no longer!

      This meeting, more than the earlier meeting between Woodrow Wilson and his impetuous young kinsman Yaeger Ruggles, marks the first true emergence of the Curse; as an early, subtle and easily overlooked symptom marks the emergence to come of a deadly disease.

      As, one might say, the early symptoms of Woodrow Wilson’s breakdown, stroke and collapse of May 1906 were prefigured here, in the events of this day, unsuspected by Woodrow Wilson, his family and his most trusted friends.

      For that evening, after dinner, feeling more robust, though his brain was assailed by a thousand worries, Woodrow decided to walk a windy mile to Crosswicks Manse on Elm Road, the family estate of the Slades. It had been his request to see Reverend Winslow Slade in private, and in secrecy, at 10 p.m. precisely; Woodrow, who had a boyish predilection for such schemes, as a way of avoiding the unwanted attention of others, was to enter the dignified old stone house by a side door that led into Reverend Slade’s library, and bypass the large rooms at the front of the house. For this was not a social meeting—there was no need to involve any of the household staff or any of Dr. Slade’s family.

      The last thing Woodrow Wilson wanted was to be talked-of; to be the object of speculation, crude gossip.

      His dignity was such, yes and his pride: he could not bear his name, his reputation, his motives so besmirched.

      For it was beginning to be generally known in Princeton, in this fourth and most tumultuous year of his presidency of the university, that Woodrow Wilson was encountering a cunning, ruthless, and unified opposition led by the politically astute Dean Andrew Fleming West, whose administrative position at the university preceded Woodrow’s inauguration as president; and who was reputed to be deeply aggrieved that the presidency, more or less promised to him by the board of trustees, had unaccountably been offered to his younger rival Woodrow Wilson, who had not the grace to decline in his favor.

      All this rankled, and was making Woodrow’s life miserable; his primary organ of discomfort was his stomach, and intestines; yet nearly so vulnerable, his poor aching brain that buzzed through day and night like a hive of maddened hornets. Yet, as a responsible administrator, and an astute politician, he was able to disguise his condition much of the time, even in the very company of West, who confronted Woodrow too with mock courtesy, like an unctuous hypocrite in a Molière comedy whose glances into the audience draw an unjust sympathy, to the detriment of the idealistic hero.

      Like a large ungainly burden, a steamer trunk perhaps, stuffed with unwanted and outgrown clothing, shoes and the miscellany of an utterly ordinary and unexamined life, Woodrow Wilson sought to carry the weight of such anxiety to his mentor, and unburden himself of it, at his astonished elder’s feet.

      It would not be the first time that “Tommy” Wilson had come to appeal to “Win” Slade, surreptitiously; but it would be the final time.*

      “Woodrow, hello! Come inside, please.”

      A gust of wind, tinged with irony, accompanied Woodrow into the elder man’s library.

      Reverend Slade grasped the younger man’s hand, that was rather chill, and limp; a shudder seemed to run from the one to the other, leaving the elder man slightly shaken.

      “I gather that there is something troubling you, Woodrow? I hope—it isn’t—anything involving your family?”

      Between the two, there had sometimes been talk, anxious on Woodrow’s side and consoling and comforting on Winslow’s, about Woodrow’s “marital relations”—(which is not to say “sexual relations”—the men would never have discussed so painfully private a matter)—and Woodrow’s disappointment at being the father of only girls.

      Woodrow, breathless from the wind-buffeted walk along Elm Road, where streetlights were few, and very little starlight assisted his way, and but a gauze-masked moon, stared at his friend for a moment without comprehending his question. Family? Was Winslow Slade alluding to Woodrow’s distant “cousin”—Yaeger Washington Ruggles?

      Then, Woodrow realized that of course Winslow was referring to his wife, Ellen, and their daughters. Family.

      “No, Winslow. All is well there.” (Was this so? The answer came quickly, automatically; for it was so often asked.) “It’s another matter I’ve come to discuss with you. Except—I am very ashamed.”

      “