Mudwoman by Joyce Carol Oates Read Free Book Online Page A

have a room for her and I could drive her to some other hotel and she laughed and said no Carlos! That is very kind of you but no—of course there will be a room.
    As the desk clerk would say Her room was ready for her at about 1 : 15 P.M. She was gracious about waiting, she said it was no trouble. But then a few minutes later she called the front desk—I spoke with her—she asked about a car rental recommendation. Sometime after that she must have left the hotel. Nobody would’ve seen her, the lobby was so crowded. Her room was empty at 8 : 30 P.M. when some people from the conference asked us to open it. There was no DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door. The lights were off. Her suitcase was on the bed opened but mostly unpacked and her laptop was on the bed, not opened. There weren’t any signs of anybody breaking into the room or anything disturbed and there was no note left behind.
    B y 2 P.M. she was in the rental car driving north of Ithaca.
    Her lungs swelled with—relief? Exultation?
    She’d told no one where she was going or even that she was going—somewhere.
    Of course, M.R. was paying for the compact Toyota with her personal credit card.
    Of course, M.R. knew that her behavior was impulsive but reasoned that since she’d arrived early at the conference, in fact hours before the conference officially began, this interlude—before 6 P.M. , or 6:30 P.M. —was a sort of free fall, like gravity-less space.
    Once she’d asked her (secret) lover how an astronomer can bear the silence and vastness of the sky which is unbroken/unending/unfathomable and which yields nothing remotely human in fact rather makes a mockery of human and he’d said— But darling! That is what draws the astronomer to his subject: silence, vastness.
    Driving north to Beechum County she was driving into what felt like silence. For she’d left the radio off, and the wind whining and whistling at all the windows drained away all sound as in a vacuum leaving her brain blank.
    Ancient time her lover called the sky without end predating every civilization on Earth that believed it was the be-all and end-all of Earth.
    She’d resolved to drive for just an hour and a half in one direction. Three hours away would return her to the hotel by 5 P.M. and well in time to change and prepare for the reception.
    Except the driving was wind-buffeted. She’d rented a small car.
    Not so very practical for driving at a relatively high speed on the interstate flanked and overtaken by tractor-trailers.
    In high school driver’s education class, M.R. had been an exemplary student. Aged sixteen she’d learned to parallel park with such skill, her teacher used her as a model for other students. Approvingly he’d said of her Meredith handles a car like a man.
    Remembering how when she’d first begun driving she’d felt dizzy with excitement, happiness. That thrill of sheer power in the way the vehicle leaps when you press down on the gas pedal, turns when you turn the steering wheel, slows and stops when you brake.
    Remembering how she’d thought This is something men know. A girl has to discover.
    “ ‘Just to stretch my legs.’ No other reason.”
    She laughed. Her laughter was hopeful. A thin dew of fever-dreams on her forehead, oily and prickling in her armpits. And some sort of snarl in her hair. As if in the night she’d been dreaming of—something like this.
    She would have time to shower before the reception—wouldn’t she? Change into her chic presidential clothes.
    As a girl—a big husky girl—a girl-athlete—M.R. had sweated like any boy, sweat-rivulets running down her sides, a torment at the nape of her neck beneath the bushy-springy hair. And in her crotch—a snaggle of even denser hair, exerting a sort of appalled fascination to the bearer—who was “Meredith”—in dread of this snaggle of hair being somehow known by others; as there were years—middle school, high school—of anxiety that her body would smell in such a way to