4th Estate
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This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2016
First published in the United States by Ecco in 2016
Copyright © 2016 by The Ontario Review, Inc.
Cover photographs © Stephen Carroll / Trevillion Images
Joyce Carol Oates asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780008165383
Ebook Edition © January 2016 ISBN: 9780008165406
Version: 2016-12-21
TO MY HUSBAND CHARLIE GROSS,
MY FIRST READER
The annihilation is not the terror.
The journey is the terror.
–ELIHU HOOPES
Contents
NOTES ON AMNESIA: PROJECT “E.H.” (1965–1996)
She meets him, she falls in love. He forgets her.
She meets him, she falls in love. He forgets her.
She meets him, she falls in love. He forgets her.
At last she says good-bye to him, thirty-one years after they’ve first met. On his deathbed, he has forgotten her.
HE IS STANDING on a plank bridge in a low-lying marshy place with his feet just slightly apart and firmly on his heels to brace himself against a sudden gust of wind.
He is standing on a plank bridge in this place that is new to him and wondrous in beauty. He knows he must brace himself, he grips the railing with both hands, tight.
In this place new to him and wondrous in beauty yet he is fearful of turning to see, in the shallow stream flowing beneath the bridge, behind his back, the drowned girl.
… naked, about eleven years old, a child. Eyes open and sightless, shimmering in water. Rippling-water, that makes it seem that the girl’s face is shuddering. Her slender white body, long white tremulous legs and bare feet. Splotches of sunshine, “water-skaters” magnified in shadow on the girl’s face.
SHE WILL CONFIDE in no one: “On his deathbed, he didn’t recognize me.”
She will confide in no one: “On his deathbed, he didn’t recognize me but he spoke eagerly to me as he’d always done, as if I were the one bringing him hope—‘Hel-lo?’”
BRAVELY AND VERY publicly she will acknowledge—He is my life. Without E.H., my life would have been to no purpose.
All that I have achieved as a scientist, the reason you have summoned me here to honor me this evening, is a consequence of E.H. in my life.
I am speaking the frankest truth as a scientist and as a woman.
She speaks passionately, yet haltingly. She seems to be catching at her breath, no longer reading from her prepared speech but staring out into the audience with moist eyes—blinded by lights, puzzled and blinking, she can’t see individual faces and so might imagine his face among them.