Read Online Evil Eye by Joyce Carol Oates - Free Book Online Page A

that.”
    â€œHer eye—her eye is missing. She must have had cancer. The poor woman, how can she bear to look at herself in the mirror—how can she have a professional career—why doesn’t she get outfitted with an artificial eye? It’s so horrible to see, I’ll have nightmares seeing that empty socket, it would have been kind of you to have warned me, Austin. . . .”
    â€œInes is not missing an eye. Ines has not had cancer—so far as I know. You’re exhausted, and you’re not being coherent. You haven’t been any help in this crisis, you’ve made things worse with your hysteria. All you need to know, Mariana, is that Ines will never visit this house again. You will never see that woman again—don’t worry.”
    With grave disappointment Austin spoke. As Mariana stared after him he walked off, heavy-footed, disgusted.
    In the days and weeks following the first wife’s visit Mariana was susceptible to headaches, indigestion, insomnia.
    Mariana was keenly aware of how the house, Austin’s beautiful house, had been altered.
    It was not simply the husband’s wariness in her company: his air of caution, though often he smiled at her and seemed to agree with her, as one might humor a deranged person; it was something more fundamental, a distrust of her, as of a stranger living in his household.
    She fell into a habit of touching her eye: the left eye.
    She fell into a habit of touching her eye: the right eye. To assure herself that it was there, and not merely a socket.
    She fell into the habit of stroking her bare arm slowly and sensuously, as if comforting herself. Her fingertips seeking out tiny near-invisible moles in the pale skin.
    It was clear, the atmosphere of the house had been altered. The quality of the light refracted from the Bay miles away, as if a minuscule drop of toxin had been introduced.
    The most gorgeous orchid plant, a faint rosy pink striated with dark stripes, began to drop its petals.
    Nothing Mariana could do seemed to help. One by one the petals fell until only ugly skeletal stick-stalks remained.
    Glossy leaves from the jade plant began to fall. If Mariana watered the plant, leaves fell; if Mariana held back from watering the plant, leaves fell.
    One of the bonsai trees began to wither.
    Mariana was in a panic wondering if she should hurry out to a florist’s shop and buy new, healthy plants. For Austin would blame her, she knew. It had fallen to her to oversee the plants.
    Probably, it was too late. He’d noticed the sickly orchids, in particular. If Mariana tried to deceive him, that would not go well with her.
    A crack appeared in one of the beautiful earthen-colored Catalan bowls, but Mariana was certain she had not touched for months.
    She examined the blue-glass nazar hanging by the doorway. Waiting for it to slip from her fingers and shatter on the floor—but it did not, yet.
    What a hell, insomnia! The raging fever returned to her, after nearly a year.
    Long ago Mariana had used up the barbiturates her mother’s doctor had prescribed for her back in Connecticut. She made an appointment in Berkeley, without Austin’s knowledge, and received a prescription for sleeping pills. She’d told the doctor that she and her husband would be traveling to Europe soon, and that she needed as many pills as he could give her. She filled the prescription at once, at the nearest pharmacy. Driving home along the narrow twisting hillside roads she felt a terrible dryness in her mouth, as if she’d already begun taking barbiturates and would never again be fully awake. Home in the house she was grateful to be alone—so grateful! Austin was at the Institute and would return home late. He, too, had had difficulty sleeping in recent weeks, his sinus headaches had returned since Ines’s visit and he was beginning a strict regimen of antibiotics.
    In the living room flooded with late-afternoon light from the