Carthage. Joyce Carol Oates

other for being blind, stubborn.

      Arlette had known he’d become overheated in the Preserve, he’d had no right to rush off like that tramping through underbrush while she was alone at the house. Waiting for a call—calls. Waiting for something to happen.

      After a distracted hour she returned to check on Zeno: he was sprawled on the bed only partly undressed. As if he’d been too exhausted to do more than pull off his khaki shorts and let them fall to the floor.

      Sprawled, breathing hoarsely and wetly, through his mouth, like a beached whale might breathe. And his face slack putty-colored, you’d never have guessed had been a handsome face not so long ago.

      Unshaven. Wiry whiskers sprouting on his jaws.

      Zeno Mayfield was a man who had to be prevented from pushing himself too hard. As if he had no natural sense of restraint, of normal limits.

      As, when he’d been a young attorney taking on difficult cases—hopeless cases—unpopular cases; once, unforgivably, taking on a case so controversial, anonymous callers had threatened him and his family and Arlette had worried that some madman might mail a bomb, or affix a bomb to one of their cars. In the name of God think what you are doing, man—one of the anonymous notes had warned.

      All Zeno had done, he’d protested, was defend a high school biology teacher who’d been suspended from his job for having taught Darwinian evolutionary theory to the exclusion of “creationism.”

      And when he’d been mayor of Carthage, an exhausting and quixotic venture into “public service” that had paid a token salary—(fifteen hundred annually!)—he’d pushed himself beyond what even his avid supporters might have expected of him and saw his popularity plummet nonetheless. The most controversial issue of Zeno’s mayoralty had been a campaign to install recycling in Carthage—yellow barrels for bottles and cans, green barrels for paper and cardboard. You’d have thought that Zeno Mayfield was a descendant of Trotsky! His daughters had asked plaintively Why do people hate Daddy? Don’t they know how funny and nice Daddy is?

      Arlette hadn’t lain down beside him. She hadn’t held him tight in her arms. But she’d laid a cloth over his face, dampened with cold water, and he’d pushed it off and clutched anxiously at her hand.

      “Lettie—d’you think—he did something to her? And now he’s ashamed, and can’t tell us? Lettie—d’you think—oh God, Lettie . . . ”

      YOUR MOTHER AND I chose our daughters’ names with particular care. Because we don’t think that either of you is ordinary. So an ordinary name isn’t appropriate.

      He was solemn and dogged trying to explain. She was younger than the age she was now and rudely she laughed.

      Bullshit, Daddy. That is such bullshit.

      It was like Cressida to laugh in your face. Squinch up her face like a wicked little monkey. Her laughter was high-pitched like a monkey’s chittering and her small shiny-black eyes were merry with derision.

      They were in someplace Zeno didn’t recognize. Not in the forest now but in a place meant to be this place—the Mayfield home.

      Why is it, when you dream about a place meant to be “home”—or any “familiar” place—it never looks like anything you’d ever seen before?

      He was trying to explain to her. She was making her silly-little-girl face rolling her eyes and batting away his words as she’d have batted away badminton birdies with both her balled-up fists.

      Saying Bullshit Daddy, except for her face Juliet is O-R-D-I-N-A-R-Y.

      Zeno took exception to this. Zeno was angered when his bright unruly younger daughter mocked his sweetly-serene and beautiful elder daughter.

      And anyway it wasn’t true. Or it was a partial truth. For Juliet’s beauty wasn’t exclusively her face.

      The exchange between the father and Cressida was a dream. Yet, the exchange had taken place more or less in this way, years before.

      The Mayfield girls were like the daughters of a fairy-tale king.

      Bitterly the younger daughter resented the fact—(if it was a fact, it was unprovable)—that the father loved the elder, more beautiful daughter more than he loved her, whose twisty little heart he couldn’t master.

      I love both our girls. I love them for different reasons. But equally.

      And Arlette said I hope you do. And if you don’t, or can’t—I hope you can disguise it.

      All parents know: there are children who are easy to love, and children who are a challenge to love.

      There are radiant children like Juliet Mayfield. Guileless, shadowless, happy.

      There are difficult children like Cressida. Steeped in the ink of irony as if in the womb.

      The bright happy children are grateful for your love. The dark twisty children must test your love.

      Maybe Cressida was “autistic”—in grade school, the possibility had been raised.

      Later, in high school the fancier epithet “Asperger’s” was suggested—with no more validation.

      If Cressida had known she’d have said, airily—Who cares? People are such idiots.

      Zeno supposed that in secret, Cressida cared very much.

      It was clear that Cressida resented how in Carthage, among people who knew the Mayfields, she was likely to be described as the smart one while her sister Juliet was the pretty one.

      How much would an adolescent girl rather be pretty, than smart!

      For of course, Cressida was invariably judged too smart.

      As in too smart for her own good.

      As in too smart for a girl her age.

      When she’d first started school, she’d complained: “Nobody else is named ‘Cressida.’ ”

      It was a difficult name to pronounce. It was a name that fitted awkwardly in the mouth.

      Her parents had said of course no one else was named “Cressida” because “Cressida” was her own special name.

      Cressida had considered this. She did think of herself as different from other children—more restless, more impatient, more easily vexed, smarter—(at least usually)—quicker to laugh and quicker to tears. But she wasn’t sure if having a special name was a good idea, for it allowed others to know what might be better kept secret.

      “I hate it when people laugh at me. I hate it if they call me ‘Cress’—‘Cressie.’ ”

      She was one of those individuals, less frequently female than male, whose names couldn’t be appropriated—like a Richard who refuses to be diminished to “Dick,” or a Robert who will not be “Bob.”

      When she was older and may have felt a little (secret) pride in her unusual name, still she sometimes complained that other people asked her about it; for other people, including teachers, were likely to be over-curious, or just rude: “ ‘Cressida’ makes me feel self-conscious, sometimes.”

      Or, with a downward tug of her mouth, as if an invisible hook had snagged her there, “ ‘Cressida’ makes me feel accursed.”

      Accursed! This was not so remarkable a word for Cressida, as a girl of twelve who loved to read in the adult section of the Carthage Public Library, particularly novels designated as dark fantasy, romance.

      Of course, Cressida had looked up her name online.

      Reporting to her parents, incensed: “ ‘Cressida’—or ‘Criseyde’—isn’t nice at all. She’s ‘faithless’—that’s how people thought of her in the Middle Ages. Chaucer wrote about her, and then Shakespeare. First she was in love with a soldier named Troilus—then she was in love with another man—and when that ended, she had no one. And no one loved her, or cared