It could have turned out to be a great long-term relationship, with consideration on both sides and genuine understanding and everything. But at some point Lizzy noticed that Charlie hadn’t been wound up for two whole weeks, and all of a sudden it was Lizzy who was nervous. She thought: I have this funny kind of feeling that my sweetie’s neglecting me. Yeah, just like Lucy and Tommy. It’s the beginning of the end, Lucy always says…
And that’s when Lizzy got the idea. The idea with Picasso’s beard, that is. There was this report on the television news about an art auction in New York, and Lizzy couldn’t change the channel right away to Rich and Famous because her fingernails weren’t quite dry. And when she heard what they were asking for the pictures, that was the beginning of Lizzy’s interest in art. Eyes wide, she scribbled the name “Picasso” on a scrap of paper. And afterward, she dug out the scrap of paper, learned the name by heart, and went out in search of a bookstore.
It didn’t take Lizzy long at all to draw one of the funny-looking naked women from the Great Book of Picasso. On the third try, she was satisfied. And once she had it in the big golden frame from the furniture store, it looked pretty good to her. Lizzy hung it over the bed between the cat portrait and the sunset.
Then she called Lucy. “Hi, it’s Lizzy… Hey, Lucy, you gotta do me a favor, okay? But it’s gotta be a secret, so don’t tell anyone, okay? See, Tommy shaves with an electric shaver, doesn’t he? Well, see, the thing is, I could really use some of the hairs from the shaver. No, it’s not a joke! What, you guys are splitting up? No, really? Hey, well, all I can say is: Men! You know? But hey, can you do it? The hairs from the shaver, I mean?… Hey, super, really! I’ll come over tomorrow and pick them up. Tomorrow afternoon. Hey, take care of yourself, okay? Bye!”
Two days later, Charlie turned up to see Lizzy. It took awhile until he went into the bathroom, and in the bathroom it took awhile until he noticed the sink. But when he did, Charlie showed he was the same guy he’d always been.
“Who is it?” he bellowed. “Who?… Shaving! There!” And when he tore into the bedroom, Charlie had that crazy look that Lizzy had been waiting for.
“Anything, sweetie!” she cried out. “Anything but my Picasso!”
“Picasso? Where is that pig? Where’s the damn pig?!” And then Charlie saw the picture on the wall, and that was the last straw. It bothered Lizzy a little when the beautiful picture frame got broken, but she didn’t say anything; she was a strong woman.
And Charlie was a man of his word. He was pale when he got back from New York, but he had it, he really had it with him, the genuine Picasso. And it was a really big one, an oil painting, just the way he’d promised Lizzy. But when she said, “Oh, Charliesweetie” and blew in his ear, it was different from before, because Charlie was still pale, and didn’t look happy at all.
Two weeks later, Charlie took the elevator to the top floor, went into the penthouse, and took care of Lizzy. Then he packed everything that was left of her into the deep freeze. And didn’t get wound up at all, the whole time.
Lizzy’s plan wasn’t a bad idea, but even so, she’d made a mistake: She’d told Lucy about it. And it was Lucy who told Charlie the whole story when he got back from New York.
Because Lucy had almost everything. Everything but a place of her own. But because she had almost everything, she had Charlie, and he had a spare.
Valentine, July Heat Wave
by Joyce Carol Oates
© 2007 by Joyce Carol Oates
A National Book Award winner and a recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, Joyce Carol Oates is the author of many important literary novels, and short-story and poetry collections. She has also become a notable contributor to crime fiction in recent years. Her second collection of crime stories, The Museum of Dr. Moses: Tales of Mystery and Suspense, is due from Harcourt in August. She’s also got a new novel due in June. See The Gravedigger’s Daughter (Ecco).
By calculated estimate is Eight days should be about right.
Not that I am a pathologist, or any kind of “naturalist.” My title at the university is professor of humanities. Yet a little research has made me fairly confident Eight days during this heat should be about right.
Because I have loved you, I will not cease to love you. It is not my way (as I believe you must know) to alter. As you vowed to be my wife, I vowed to be your husband. There can be no alteration of such vows. This, you know.
You will return to our house, you will return to our bedroom. When I beckon you inside you will step inside. When I beckon you to me you will come to me. You will judge if my estimate has been correct.
Eight days! My valentine.
The paradox is: Love is a live thing, and live things must die.
Sometimes abruptly, and sometimes over time.
Live things lose life: vitality, animation, the pulse of a beating heart and coursing blood carrying oxygen to the brain, the ability to withstand invasion by predatory organisms that devour them. Live things become, in the most elemental, crudest way of speaking, dead things.
And yet, the paradox remains: In the very body of death, in the very corpse of love, an astonishing new life breeds.
This valentine I have prepared for you, out of the very body of love.
You will arrive at the house alone, for that is your promise. Though you have ceased to love me (as you claim) you have not ceased to be an individual of integrity and so I know that you would not violate that promise. I believe you when you’ve claimed that there is no other man in your life: no other “love.” And so, you will return to our house alone.
Your flight from Denver is due to arrive at 3:22 P.M. You’ve asked me not to meet you at the airport and so I have honored that wish. You’ve said that you prefer to rent a car at the airport and drive to the house by yourself and after you have emptied your closets, drawers, shelves of those items of yours you care to take away with you, you prefer to drive away alone, and to spend the night at an airport hotel where you’ve made a reservation. (Eight days ago when I called every airport hotel and motel to see if you’d made the reservation yet, you had not. At least, not under your married name.) When you arrive at the house, you will not turn into the driveway but park on the street. You will stare at the house. You will feel very tired. You will feel like a woman in a trance of — what?
Guilt, surely. Dread. That sick sense of imminent justice when we realize we must be punished, we will get what we “deserve.”
Or maybe you will simply think: Within the hour it will be ended. At last, I will be free!