Carthage. Joyce Carol Oates

his head was lowered on the pillow, Zeno fell asleep.

      A harsh serrated breathing, as if briars were caught in his throat.

      The air-conditioning was on. A thin cool air moved through the bedroom. Arlette pulled a sheet up over her sleeping husband’s shoulders. At such moments she was overcome with a sensation of love for the man, commingled with fear, the sight of his thick-muscled shoulders, his upper arms covered in wiry hairs, the slack flesh of his jaws when he lay on his side. Inside the middle-aged man, the brash youthful Zeno Mayfield with whom Arlette had fallen in love yet resided.

      In a man’s sleep, his mortality is most evident.

      They were of an age now, and moving into a more emphatic age, when women began to lose their husbands—to become “widows.” Arlette could not allow herself to think in this way.

      Remembering later, of that night: their concern had been for Juliet, and for Brett Kincaid whom possibly they would not ever see again.

      Their thoughts were almost exclusively of Juliet. As it had been in the Mayfield household since Corporal Kincaid had returned in his disabled state.

      Cressida passing like a wraith in their midst. On her way out for the evening to visit with a friend from high school who lived so close, Cressida could walk instead of driving. At about 6 P.M. she must have called out a casual good-bye—in the kitchen Arlette and Juliet would scarcely have taken note.

      Bye! See you-all later.

      Possibly, they hadn’t heard. Cressida hadn’t troubled to come to the kitchen doorway, to announce that she was going.

      Zeno hadn’t been home. Out at the liquor store, choosing wine with the fussy particularity of a man who doesn’t know anything about wine really but would like to give the impression that he does.

      It shouldn’t have been anything other than an ordinary evening though it was a Saturday night in midsummer.

      In upstate New York in the Adirondack region, the population trebled in summer.

      Summer people. Campers, pickup trucks. Bikers’ gangs. In the night, on even a quiet residential street like Cumberland, you could hear the sneering roar of motorcycles in the distance.

      At the lakes—Wolf’s Head, Echo, Wild Forest—there were “incidents” each summer. Fights, assaults, break-ins, vandalism, arson, rapes, murders. Small local police departments with only a few officers had to call in the New York State Police, at desperate times.

      When Zeno had been mayor of Carthage, several Hells Angels gangs had congregated in Palisade Park. After a day and part of a night of drunken and increasingly destructive festivities local residents had so bitterly complained, Zeno sent in the Carthage City Police to “peaceably” clear the park.

      Just barely, a riot had been averted. Zeno had been credited with having made the right decisions, just in time.

      No one had been arrested. No police officers had been injured. The state troopers hadn’t had to be summoned to Carthage.

      The bikers’ gangs hadn’t returned to Palisade Park. But they congregated, weekends, at the lakes. Still you could sometimes hear, in the distance, at night, a window open, the sneering-defiant motorcycle-whine, mixed with a sound of nighttime insects.

      Arlette left the bedroom. Zeno hadn’t wakened.

      In a thin muslin nightgown in bare feet making her way along the carpeted corridor. Past the shut door of Juliet’s room—for she knew, Juliet was home—Juliet had been in bed for hours, like her parents—unerringly to the room in which she knew there was something wrong.

      By this time, past 4 A.M., Cressida would have returned from Marcy Meyer’s house. Hours ago, she’d have returned. She wouldn’t have wanted to disturb her parents but would have gone upstairs to her room as quietly as possible—it was a peculiarity of their younger daughter, since she’d been a small child, as Zeno noted she could creep like a little mousie and no one knew she was there.

      Even as Arlette was telling herself this, she was pushing open the door, switching on a light, to see: Cressida’s bed still made, undisturbed.

      This was wrong. This was very wrong.

      Arlette stood in the doorway, staring.

      Of course, the room was empty. Cressida was nowhere in sight.

      They’d gone to bed after their guests left and the kitchen was reasonably clean. They’d gone to bed soon after 11 P.M., Arlette and Zeno, without a thought, or not much more than a fleeting thought, about Cressida who was, after all—as they’d been led to believe—only just visiting with her high school friend Marcy Meyer less than a mile away.

      Maybe the girls had had dinner together. Or maybe with Marcy’s parents. Maybe a DVD afterward. Misfit girls together in solidarity Cressida had joked.

      In high school, Cressida and Marcy had been “best friends” by default, as Cressida said. Friendships of girls unpopular together are forged for life.

      (It was Cressida’s way to exaggerate. Neither she nor Marcy Meyer was “unpopular”—Arlette was certain.)

      Slowly Arlette came forward, to touch the comforter on Cressida’s bed.

      With perfect symmetry the comforter had been pulled over the bedclothes. If Arlette were to lift it she knew she would see the sheets beneath neatly smoothed, for Cressida could not tolerate wrinkles or creases in fabrics.

      The sheets would be tightly tucked in between the mattress and the box springs.

      For it was their younger daughter’s way to do things neatly. With an air of fierce disdain, dislike—yet neatly.

      All things that were tasks and chores—“household” things—Cressida resented having to do. Her imagination was loftier, more abstract.

      Yet, though she resented such tasks, she dispatched them swiftly, to get them out of the way.

      Can’t imagine anything more stultifying than the life of a housewife! Poor Mom.

      Arlette was frequently nettled by her younger daughter’s thoughtless remarks. Though she knew that Cressida loved her, at times it seemed clear that Cressida did not respect her.

      But if you hadn’t been up for it, Jule and I wouldn’t be here, I guess.

      So, thanks!

      Arlette wondered: was it possible that Cressida had planned to stay overnight at Marcy’s? As she’d done sometimes when the girls were in middle school together. It seemed unlikely now, but . . .

      For God’s sake, Mom. What an utterly brainless idea.

      Arlette left Cressida’s room and went downstairs. She was breathing quickly now though her heartbeat was calm.

      From a wall phone in the kitchen downstairs, Arlette called Cressida’s cell phone number.

      There came a faint ringing, but no answer.

      Then, a burst of electronic music, dissonant chords and computer-voice coolly instructing the caller to leave a message after the beep.

      Cressida? It’s Mom. I’m calling at four-ten A.M. Wondering where you are . . . If you can please call back as soon as possible . . .

      Arlette hung up the phone. But immediately, Arlette lifted the receiver and called again.

      The second time, she fumbled leaving a message. Just Mom again. We’re a little worried about you, honey. It’s pretty late . . . Give us a call, OK?

      Now invoking us. For Cressida did respect her father.

      It occurred to Arlette then that Cressida might be home: only just not in her room.

      From earliest childhood she’d been an unpredictable child. You might look for her in all the wrong places as she watched you through a crack in a doorway, bursting into laughter at the worried look