Spider Boy
“There are places in the world where people vanish.”
His father had said this. His father had spoken flatly, without an air of
mystery or threat. It was not a statement to be challenged and it was not
a statement to be explained. Later, when his father had vanished out of
his life, he would summon back the words as a kind of explanation and in
anxious moments he would mis-hear the words as There are places in the
world where people can vanish.
Still later, when he had not seen his father in a long time, or what
seemed to him a long time, months, or maybe just weeks, he would try to
summon the words again, exactly as his father had uttered them, but by
this time he’d become uncertain, anxious. Where people can vanish, or
where people vanish?
It was such a crucial distinction!
“Remember your new name. Think before you answer. Not just, ‘What’s your
name?’ but any question. It helps to lick your lips. That will give you
time not to make a mistake you can’t unmake.”
Yet not his name but his surname was the issue. For his surname had been
so disgraced there had come to be a fascination in its forbidden sound.
The elided consonants and vowels, the lift of its final syllable, an
expression of (possibly mocking) surprise like an arched eyebrow. In
private, in his secret places, he spoke the forbidden name aloud in
mimicry of newscasters who gave to it an air of intrigue and reproach.
Sometimes in his bed at night in his new room in his grandparents’ house
he pressed his face deeply into the pillow and spoke the forbidden name,
each syllable equally and defiantly stressed – Szaara. He spoke the name
until his breath ran out and his lungs ached and through his body raced a
half-pleasurable panic that he would smother.
A pillow. Where his mouth was, wet with saliva. Where his teeth gnawed. A
pillow is a comforting thing when your head rests on it, but if a pillow
is pressed against your face, if you are lying on your back and a pillow
is pressed against your face, you could not summon the strength to push it
away and save yourself.
“YES. We’ve moved out of state.”
Before even the impeachment hearings his mother had filed for divorce from
their father. But before even she’d filed for divorce she’d moved them – Emily,
Philip, herself – into her parents’ big stone house overlooking
the Hudson River at Nyack, New York.
Now it was a drive of several hours to the old house in Trenton,
overlooking the Delaware River. On the map, it was really not very far but
there was an air of distance and finality in his mother’s frequently
repeated words: “Out of state.”
Out of state caught in Philip’s mind, uttered in his mother’s breathless
yet adamant voice. As you might say out of space, out of time.
Out of danger, out of harm.
Out of toxic contagion.
In this new state it was essential to have a new name. To replace and
nullify the old, disgraced name. Quickly! – before Emily and Philip were
enrolled in their new schools.
“Yes, we think it’s best. Separate schools.”
Private day schools. Nyack Academy for Emily, who was fifteen and in her
second year of high school, Edgerstoune School for Philip, who would be
thirteen in August, and would enter eighth grade. In New Jersey both
children had gone to the Pennington Academy, in a northern Trenton suburb.
Sometimes their mother drove them to school, sometimes one of their
father’s assistants. There was a private bus provided by the school, of
the identical bright-pumpkin hue of public school buses but only
one-third the size. Riding on this bus, they’d never sat together and
acknowledged each other only politely, with diffident smiles.
For a few weeks during the impeachment hearings they’d continued to attend
the Pennington Academy, but when criminal charges were brought against
their father and the impeachment hearings ceased, their mother had removed
them from school.
“It has to be done. They can’t be made to suffer for him. They are only
children.”
In Nyack, it soon became official: they had a new name.
Where Szaara had been, now there was Hudgkins.
Where Philip Szaara had been, now there was Philip Hudgkins.
Where Emily Szaara had been, now there was Emily Hudgkins.
For this wasn’t a “new” new name, of course. It was their Nyack
grandparents’ name which they’d long known and with which they had, their
mother insisted, only happy associations. Their mother would take up again
her old, “maiden” name with relief. During the sixteen years of her
marriage to the New Jersey politician Roy Szaara she had retained Hudgkins
as her middle name, she’d continued to be known by certain of her women
friends, with whom she’d gone to Bryn Mawr, as Miriam Hudgkins. And so:
“It isn’t a great change. It’s more like coming back home.” She smiled
bravely. She smiled defiantly. She had had her hair cut and restyled and
she had a new way of clasping, at waist level, her shaky left hand in her
more forceful right hand, as a practiced tennis player might clasp a
racket.
“I mean, it is coming home. Where we belong.”
“‘SPIDER BOY.'”
You might have thought that “Spider Boy” was in playful reference to the
comic strip/movie superhero “-Spider-man” but in fact Philip had no
interest in Spider-man as he had no interest in the comics, action films
and video games that so captivated other boys.
“‘Spider Boy.'”
It was a way of evoking the haunting and powerful presence that existed
now entirely in memory. Except for a single memento (smelly, ugly, of a
clumsy size and in no way to be mistaken for something of Philip’s own)
kept in a secret place in his room, Philip might begin to consider whether
Spider Boy had ever existed. For he understood He has vanished without
having needed to be told.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from High Lonesome
by Joyce Carol Oates Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Ecco
ISBN: 0-06-050119-7
