Middle Age by Joyce Carol Oates Read Free Book Online Page A

disconcerting. They were standing so close together they might have been mistaken for a couple.
    Marina had to resist a sudden impulse to step into Adam’s arms, to embrace him around his burly chest, lay her head against him, and be comforted in her distress, even as Adam was the agent of her distress. She disengaged herself from the weight and heat of his hand. “Adam, of course I couldn’t accept such a gift. How have you come into this property, that you can throw it away? What are you thinking of?” Adam said, surprised,
    “What am I thinking of? I’m thinking of you .” “I’m not a young woman any longer, Adam. And even if I—” “Bullshit.”
    Abruptly then, Adam turned away, and continued on the hiking trail.
    He was offended, thwarted. He would speak no more on the subject that day. Like a woman who has crawled out of a wreck, Marina glanced down at herself to see if she was still there. She wiped her damp, clammy face carefully with a tissue, tightened the laces of her hiking shoes, and followed after Adam who was nearly out of sight.
    Marina hoped the preposterous offer he’d made to her would be discreetly forgotten, but a few days later, Adam stopped by her narrow lavender house at the top of North Pearl Street, beside the Catholic churchyard, to present to her several fully executed legal documents deeding a property in Damascus County, Pennsylvania, to her; and, in a manila envelope, a hand-drawn map in colored inks, labeled keys, and a page-long list of instructions regarding the operation of the house. With maddening aplomb he said, “Anytime you wish, Marina. It’s yours now, it will be waiting.” Marina was frightened, furious. She wanted to strike Adam with her fists. “Adam, are you crazy? I can’t accept such a gift from you.” Adam said, winking, “From whom, then, Marina, would you accept it?” “Adam, God damn it, I can’t .” But Adam merely placed the items on a table in Marina’s front room, and strode back into her kitchen to brew himself coffee. (It was Adam’s custom to drop by houses in Salthill where he was known and, in his words, tolerated. How vast were his friends, acquaintances, neighbors, Marina had no idea. Sometimes he bicycled about, sometimes he walked.
    Sometimes he was accompanied by his dog, Apollo, “Apollodoros.” If you invited Adam, he was sure not to come; if you did not, he might.) Marina begged Adam to take back the gift, and Adam said pleasantly, “Marina, a gift from the gods can’t be rejected without invoking a curse. In time, you’ll come round.” Adam took his coffee mug back into the sunroom, and
    
    J C O
    Marina joined him, with a mug of her own, and for a half hour or so they talked of other things; when Adam left, declining her offer of dinner, he squeezed her hand hard, wetly kissed her cheek, and laughed at her. Marina thought, Is he mad? She could hear him laughing to himself halfway down the block.
    The gift as she would come to think of it. She couldn’t bring herself to touch the items he’d left for several days. This was to be Marina’s fate, was it? “No.”
    It was as she’d known: she wasn’t strong enough. She couldn’t have borne freedom in the Pocono Mountains, or anywhere. She’d lost the courage of her youth. The audacity of her youth. Never again, to her relief, did Adam bring up the subject of the farmhouse in Damascus County, Pennsylvania, and Marina never brought it up. Of course, there was the knowledge of it between them, unspoken; as, Marina supposed, the knowledge of an unborn child, a creature aborted in the womb, must hover between a woman and a man, forever in consciousness yet never spoken of.
    Marina put the gift away for safekeeping. She dared not try to return it to Adam. After this, though she continued to love him, she feared him, too, and rather resented him. No man should be so powerful, meddling with another’s soul.
    And a year and six weeks