State of Grace Read online

  Joy Williams’s

  STATE OF GRACE

  “Joy Williams catches, better than anyone writing today, the ominous vision at the corner of the eye, and makes it inevitable.”

  —Mary Lee Settle

  “Towers over most contemporary fiction.”

  —George Plimpton

  “Joy Williams’ exactness of vision, unexpected nuances, and a prose both careful and serene combine with subject matter at once elliptical and disturbing.”

  —Washington Post

  “A genuinely emotional piece of work, and once you lose yourself in it, its hypnotic magic will do wonderfully strange things to you.”

  —The Cleveland Press

  “The kind of totally involving immediacy we haven’t seen in a first novel since Lie Down in Darkness.”

  —The Antioch Review

  Also by JOY WILLIAMS

  FICTION

  The Changeling

  Taking Care

  Breaking and Entering

  NONFICTION

  The Florida Keys: A History and Guide

  Copyright © 1973 by Joy Williams

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published by Doubleday & Co., Inc. in 1973.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Williams, Joy.

  State of grace / Joy Williams.

  p. cm.—(Vintage contemporaries)

  eISBN: 978-0-307-78787-3

  I. Title.

  PS3573.I4496S73 1990

  813′.54-dc20 89-40131

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Book One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Book Two

  Chapter 20

  Book Three

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  About the Author

  BOOK ONE

  Ah! don’t you see

  Just as you’ve ruined your life in this

  One plot of ground you’ve ruined its worth

  Everywhere now—over the whole earth?

  Cavafy

  1

  There is no warning of daylight here. It is strange to know that it is only twenty miles to the Gulf of Mexico and all that dizzying impossible white light, for here there is such darkness. Here when one can see the sky, it is almost always blue, but the trees are so thick nothing can make its way through them. Not the sun or the wind. And the ground never dries. The yard is rich mud with no definition between it and the riverbank. Tiny fish swim in the marks our feet make. The trees are tall and always look wet as though they’d been dipped in grease. Many of them are magnolias and oaks. Pods, nuts and Spanish moss hang in wide festoons. The river is the perfect representation of a southern river, thin and blond, swampy, sloppy and warm. It is in everyone’s geography book. I was not shocked at all when I saw it. I was not pleased, although it is quite pretty.

  The moss is smoky and dreamy-looking. We can thank the Indians for that. It’s the hair of a girl who killed herself after her father murdered her lover.

  The moss feels like Father’s hands, which were always very rough although there wasn’t any reason for their being so. So many textures are the same. So many views. Almost all arms and noons and lips and anger are the same and love. It’s no wonder we’re all testy and exhausted, trying to show delight or even a polite interest.

  This silence is beautiful but it makes my head ring. If I awake at the proper time, I can sometimes see the mist rising from the ground and floating down through the trees to the river. I sometimes feel I live in a dangerous place. The river is only the mist moving down it.

  I wake early, as a rule. I try to remember what I’ve told him. There’s no way of being sure how much he knows. Sometimes, when we are walking through the woods together, I am quite at peace and even believe that any terror I previously felt is merely an aspect of my parturient condition. I know that he is thinking. I know that he is trying to decide what to do. I wait for his decision as nothing can proceed without it. It is the choice between life or death, between renewal or resumption. I have no fear of him. We are in love. Of course I could only hope that he would kill us, that is, Daddy and me, because I have a feeling, though I know it’s mad, that we are going to go on forever. But it’s too late for that now. I must be realistic. Even if he traveled there, he would not find Daddy. Even if he did, even if Daddy made himself available, he would not be able to deal with him. God and the Devil are the whole religion and Daddy has both on his side.

  I have not offered to leave but he does not think of this. Several times he has suggested traveling together far away. I would agree to anything but he dismisses his suggestions instantly, almost before they are uttered, as though he was not the one who made them. No possibilities are open to me. As I say, I wait. What is going to happen waits with me. We have always been reluctant companions.

  And in the meanwhile, time, as always, passes or fails to. To the eye, we have proceeded with it. We have our little willfulnesses and quirks. For example, I have terrible eating habits. He eats almost nothing now. He used to saw away at a huge side of pork that he brought down himself and prepare that in a variety of ways. But the hog is gone now, as is the reason for his killing it. Or at least we have always liked to believe that the hog was the same that butchered our hound, though the woods are full of hogs, shaking the land with their mean rooting and rutting. But the hog is gone now and the dog and our hopes for living simply, on the land and on our love. Once he liked grits with syrup and pecans that we’d shake down from the trees but now he cannot even be comforted by memories. I, on the other hand, have a terrible hunger. I love awful foods. Children’s cereals, cupcakes and store pies, that wonderful gluey bread Dixie Darling, yes, two long loaves for only 21 cents. Once, before I moved out here, I ate nothing for three weeks but Froot Loops. It became hallucinogenic after a few days. Anything will. If you breathe in too much basil, a scorpion will be born inside your head. If you eat too much roe, you’ll probably die. Why not? I had to stop the Froot Loops. Everything was so enormous and I was becoming so small. My gums bled. The girls became lecherous and outraged even though I was curious about them as well. Everything smelled rancid in that big house even though the girls washed themselves constantly and all the food was kept in jars. They were so boring about their hygiene, their hair
and fingernails. They were healthy enough I suppose. The lint-free pussy plombs employed! The cases of disposable M’Lady Tru-Touch Hand-Savers.…

  Once, for an infraction of the rules, I was forced to clean the shower drains. I also had to change all the beds.…

  I do little here in the woods. I assimilate the soundlessness. We pursue the meager life with a few garish exceptions. I have my Dixie Darling products, which, I might add, have never disappointed me, and he has his Jaguar. An old faithless and irrational roadster, black, and in perfect running condition. It is so fast and inside it is a warm cave and smells delicious. It is parked beside the trailer and often, in the afternoon, I go out and sit in it and have a drink there. It calms me. The leather is a soft dusky yellow from all the saddle soap he works into it. It smells like lemons and good tack.

  After that singular Fourth of July, Daddy never had a car, although there once were two. Daddy and I walked everywhere. On Sundays, we would skate across the pond to church—two sweethearts, my hand in his, in the other glove, ten pennies for the offering plate. Slivers of ice flew up beneath my skirt, my eyes wept. We skated quickly, seriously, lightly on Sunday mornings, barely leaving a mark behind us.…

  He loves the Jaguar—the skill and appreciation it takes to enjoy it. He is Grady. I shall make myself clear. Grady, my husband, a country boy with brown face and hands and blond matted hair low on his brow. The rest of him is long, white and skinny. He knows a great deal about hunting, fishing and engines. He loves the Jaguar and he also takes an abashed pleasure in this dank trailer which is his. It cost $10. He bought it from Sweet Tit Sue who now lives farther upriver. She wrote out a bill of sale which we keep in Rimbaud’s Illuminations. At the moment, it happens to mark the spot you know, Andthenwhenyouarehungryandthirstythereissome-

  onewhodrivesyouaway. It is not always there. We move it about for amusement, to tell our fortune. He used to enjoy that. All those words with their imminence and no significance. He always saw luck in these woods.

  He gets angry at me often now. I’m afraid it’s the way I keep house. I don’t keep house. His face becomes rigid and he speaks so softly I can barely hear him. The place is so soiled that nothing can be found. It smells. It doesn’t bother me. What is the purpose of order?

  Each morning I am ravenous. I eat with a lamp on and my feet in a pair of his socks. The mice have left their turds all over everything, in the sink and in our shoes and in the dog’s dish. It doesn’t bother me.

  I am chewing on this bread.… I must admit I eat this garbage because I want to insult myself. We think as we eat. Our brains take on flavor and scope. What I want is to slow down my head and eventually stop it. I strive for a brain friendly and homogenized as sweet potato pie.

  In the early morning, alone, eating, I push back the curtains and watch the birds. The curtains are old and streaked with the sun. They must have been brought here from another place. The cloth is rotten. It seems to come off on my hands. I use our binocular. I recognize the osprey naturally, the little blue heron, the flicker, titmouse and kingfisher. I have difficulty with ducks and hawks. I have a guide book. I have lists and charts and know proper terminology and range. Nonetheless, I am able to identify very little. The birds I often see can never be found in the book. The eye ring is incomplete or the shading of the primaries is wrong or the pattern of flight. Everything might be in order except for the silhouette. It is annoying but not surprising. Perhaps the artist who drew all these colorful pictures that appear in my book is untalented or anarchistic.

  I like birds although I realize that they are dull-witted. That is part of the reason. Birds are uncompromised by their surroundings and never react differently, an ideal, I believe. I am like them with my inflexible set of instincts. It seems I cannot improvise. For I have been through this before. I have seen these things.…

  … The important thing is to consider the significance of things and not to worry about their authenticity. This is the way I have lived my life but I really cannot comment about the efficacy of the method. It’s difficult to tell at the end of the day whether it was theory or need that got you through it. I try not to judge or feel responsible for events. I try not to make decisions. This often causes problems. For example, I’m five months pregnant. It’s only as big as a man’s palm, it’s true, but it turns and feeds inexorably. I don’t look at all pregnant and never would have thought of it myself, but I’ve been told firmly that it’s so. I peed into a paper cup and now I know.

  I would like to go off with Grady, to be with him while he is going but I lack the courage or even the ability. He has a journey to make as does the baby. I will not accompany either of them. I remain, as I will say, still. I try not to be intrusive. And I conduct myself not only carefully but hardly at all. Who could prove the life of such a creature? And who would think it necessary to deny it?

  Yes, Grady and the baby, all those people with things to do, moving through their landscapes, victimized by their sceneries. Even Daddy once took a trip. Even I years ago made a trip, which it is difficult for me to reconstruct as I was quite sick, I believe, at the time. It was on the bus. I slept for forty-seven hours on the bus. Abandoned in the seat beside me was a plastic orange, filled with disgusting perfume, purchased at a roadside rest. Also a complimentary three-inch bale of cotton. I changed seats several times, usually to free myself from unpleasant companions. One was a man with a tan reading aloud from his Bible. A real doppelgänger though cruddy and with a speech defect. “Oh remember that my life is wind,” he kept bringing up like yesterday’s breakfast. Wind, wind—we’ve all heard that line before. Well, I want to tell you something.

  Here there is not even wind. There is scarcely any air at all in these woods where Grady and I live. There is no wind or sound and nothing moves. My boy husband lies flat and prim beneath the sheets. He looks two-dimensional. When he opens his eyes, I may find that they are painted on his head. Perhaps I can dress him myself, cutting out paper trousers, shirt and Levi jacket, bending the cardboard tabs to pass and cling to his ankles, hips, waist and shoulders. Perhaps I can press some tea down his throat or drive to the coast and place him in the sun. I don’t care to watch him sleeping and always leave the room immediately. It confuses me, his lying there, his mouth dry at the corners, foam from a punctured pillow gathered round his damp cheek.

  Time does not move here. I do not change. Only the baby changes. I want to be rid of them all. I want to be rid of this terrible imposition of recall.

  One wants and wants … I used to lie constantly, but now, I assure you, I’ve stopped.

  2

  I listen to the radio. I sleep only a few hours every night and spend the rest of the time listening to the airwaves. It is very tiny, a transistor, and rather weak. I can only get one station. From midnight until six, I listen to “Action Line.” People call the station and make comments on the world and their community and they ask questions. Music is played and a brand of beef and beans is advertised. A woman calls up and says in a strangled voice, “Could you tell me why the filling in my lemon meringue pie is runny?” These people have obscene materials in their mailboxes. They want to know where they can purchase small flags suitable for waving on Armed Forces Day.

  There is a man there that answers the question, almost always right away and right on the air.

  A woman calls. Yes. She asks, “Can you get us a report on the progress of the collection of Betty Crocker coupons for the kidney machine?” The man can and does. He answers the lady’s question. He complies with her request. Astonishing.

  I think sometimes that this man can help me.

  3

  And I live by the airport, what is this that hits my house, that showers my roof on takeoff? We can hear it. What crap is this, I demand to know. My plants are green, my television reception is fine but something is going on without my consent and I am not well, my wife’s had a stroke and someone stole my stamp collection and twenty silver dollars.

  Yes, well, each p
iece of earth is bad for something. Something is going to get it on it and the land itself is no longer safe. It’s weakening. If you dig deep enough to dip your seed, beneath the crust you’ll find an emptiness like the sky. No, nothing’s compatible to living in the long run.

  Next caller, pulease.

  See, look, I begin, we can see it all. I want to flatter him. It’s all prerecorded. They can cut it out but now I have his ear, he’s mine. I can’t make you out, he says. I speak more firmly. See, look. There’s the chamois running, the cutlet nursing, the sandwich cropping grass. The bleeding baby seal capes. And the smells are overwhelming as we know. The limbs adrift in hospital incinerators. The race horse pies at the yearling auction swept up by those men in tuxedos.

  Right, he says.

  All those trees being made into publishable lies, I say. The mucus under the leaves …

  I must correct you there, he says. That’s humus. Essential to the fertility of the earth. Humus.