Joyce Carol Oates - A Widows Story: A Memoir

A Widows Story

A MEMOIR

Joyce Carol Oates

In memory of my husband

Raymond Smith

Contents

My husband died, my life collapsed.

February 15 , 2008. Returning to our car that has been haphazardly parkedby meon a narrow side street near the Princeton Medical CenterI see, thrust beneath a windshield wiper, what appears to be a sheet of stiff paper. At once my heart clenches in dismay, guilty apprehensiona ticket? A parking ticket? At such a time? Earlier that afternoon Id parked here on my wayhurried, harrieda jangle of admonitions running through my head like shrieking cicadasif youd happened to see me you might have thought pityingly That woman is in a desperate hurryas if that will do any good to visit my husband in the Telemetry Unit of the medical center where hed been admitted several days previously for pneumonia; now I need to return home for a few hours preparatory to returning to the medical center in the early eveninganxious, dry-mouthed and head-aching yet in an aroused state that might be called hopeful for since his admission into the medical center Ray has been steadily improving, he has looked and felt better, and his oxygen intake, measured by numerals that fluctuate with literally each breath, , , , , is steadily gaining, arrangements are being made for his discharge into a rehab clinic close by the medical center( hopeful is our solace in the face of mortality); and now, in the late afternoon of another of these interminable and exhausting hospital-dayscan it be that our car has been ticketed?in my distraction Id parked illegally?the time limit for parking on this street is only two hours, Ive been in the medical center for longer than two hours, and see with embarrassment that our 2007 Honda Accordeerily glaring-white in February dusk like some strange phosphorescent creature in the depths of the seais inexpertly, still more inelegantly parked, at a slant to the curb, left rear tire over the white line in the street by several inches, front bumper nearly touching the SUV in the space ahead. But nowif this is a parking ticketat once the thought comes to me I wont tell Ray , I will pay the fine in secret.

Except the sheet of paper isnt a ticket from the Princeton Police Department after all but a piece of ordinary paperopened and smoothed out by my shaky hand its revealed as a private message in aggressively large block-printed letters which with stunned staring eyes I read several times like one faltering on the brink of an abyss

In this way as in that parable of Franz Kafka in which the most profound and devastating truth of the individuals life is revealed to him by a passer-by in the street , as if accidentally , casually , so the Widow-to-Be , like the Widow , is made to realize that her situation however unhappy , despairing or fraught with anxiety , doesnt give her the right to overstep the boundaries of others , especially strangers who know nothing of herLeft rear tire over the white line in the street.

We were in a car wreck. My husband died but I survived.

This is not (factually) true. But in all other ways, it is true.

January 2007. A little more than a year before my husband was stricken with a severe case of pneumonia, and brought by his anxious wife to the ER of the Princeton Medical Center in blissful ignorance of the factthe terrible and irrefutable factthat the reverse journey would never occur bearing him back homewe were in a serious car accident, the first of our married life.

It would seem ironic in retrospect, that this accident in which Ray might easily have been killed, but was not killed, occurred hardly more than a mile from the Princeton Medical Center at the intersection of Elm Road and Rosedale Road; this was an intersection we drove through invariably on our way to Princeton, and on our way home; it is an intersection I must drive through as in a dream of nightmare repetition in which my very grief is rebuked You might have died here! You have no right to grieve , your life is a gift.

The accident occurred on a weeknight as we entered the intersection: out of nowhereon the drivers sidethere came a hellish glare of headlights, a screeching of brakes and a tremendous crash as the front of our car was demolished, windshields shattered and air bags detonated.

In the immediate aftermath of the crash we were too confused to gauge how extraordinarily lucky wed beenin the days, weeks, months to follow we would try to fathom this elusive factthat the other vehicle had struck only the front of our car, the engine, hood, front wheels; a few inches back and Ray would have been killed or seriously injured, crushed in the wreck. It was beyond our capacity to grasp how close wed come to a horrific accidentif for instance the other vehicle had sped into the intersection even a half-second later...

Inside the wreck of our car there was a gritty smoldering odor. Our air bags had exploded with remarkable rigor. If you have never been in a vehicle in which air bags have exploded you will have a difficult time imagining how violent, how forceful, how bellicose air bags are.

Vaguely you might expect something cushiony, even balloon-likeno.

You might expect something that will not injure you in the service of protecting you from injury no. In the instant of the air bag explosion Rays face, shoulders, chest and arms had been battered as if hed been the hapless sparring partner of a heavyweight boxer; his hands gripping the steering wheel were splattered with acid, leaving coin-sized burn marks that would sting for weeks. Beside him I was too rattled to comprehend how powerfully Id been hit by the air bagId thought that this was the dashboard buckling in, all but crushing me in the passengers seat so that I could barely breathe. (For the next two months my bruised chest, ribs, and arms would be so painful that I could barely move without wincing and dared not laugh heedlessly.) But in our wrecked car in the euphoria of cortical adrenaline we had little awareness of having been so battered and bruised as we managed to force our car doors open and step out onto the pavement. A wave of relief swept over us We are alive! We are unharmed!

Princeton police officers arrived at the accident scene. An ambulance arrived bearing emergency medical workers. I recalled that one of my Princeton undergraduate students, a young woman, was a volunteer for the Princeton Emergency Medical Unit and I hoped very much that this young woman would not be among the medical workers at the scene. I hoped very much that this episode would not be reported excitedly back and circulated among my students Guess who was in a car crash last nightProf. Oates!

Strongly it was recommended that Raymond Smith and Joyce Smith be taken by ambulance to the ER to be examinedespecially it was important to be X-rayedbut we declined, saying that we were all right, we were certain we were all right. Yet in the faux- euphoric aftermath of the crash in which there was no pain nor hardly an awareness of the very concept of pain we insisted that we were fine and wanted to go home.