Read Online High Crime Area by Joyce Carol Oates - Free Book Online Page B

courage.
    Such deafening sound, and little room for fear, caution. Little room for thought.
    It was thought that was the enemy, Agnes understood. Getting high meant rising above thought.
    She exited Route 1 for the state capital buildings. Through a circuitous route involving a number of one-way streets and streets barricaded for no evident reason she made her way to Tumbrel Street which was only two blocks from State Street and from the Delaware River. This was a neighborhood of decaying row houses and brownstones—boarded-up and abandoned stores. It was tricky—treacherous!—to drive here for the narrow streets were made narrower by parked vehicles.
    Very few “white” faces here. Agnes was feeling washed-out, anemic.
    It was a neighborhood of very dark-skinned African-Americans and others who were light-skinned, possibly African-American and/or Hispanic. Eagerly she looked for him .
    Turning onto Seventh Street and State Street which was a major thoroughfare in Trenton she saw more “white” faces—and many pedestrians, waiting for buses.
    Why did race matter so much? The color of skin.
    She could love anyone, Agnes thought. Skin-color did not mean anything to her, only the soul within.
    Mattia’s liquid-dark eyes. Fixed upon her.
    Ms. Agnes I feel like —more hopeful now.
    A half hour, forty minutes Agnes drove slowly along the streets of downtown Trenton. Tumbrel to West State Street and West State Street to Portage; Portage to Hammond, and Grinnell Park; right turn, and back to Tumbrel which was, for a number of blocks, a commercial street of small stores—Korean food market, beauty salon, nail salon, wig shop, diner, tavern. And a number of boarded-up, graffiti-marked stores. Trenton was not an easy city to navigate since most of the streets were one-way. And some were barricaded—under repair. (Except there appeared to be no workers repairing the streets, only just abandoned-looking heavy equipment.) She saw men on the street who might have been Joseph Mattia yet were not. Yet, she felt that she was drawing closer to him.
    She told herself I have nothing else to do. This is my only hope.
    Her husband would be dismayed! She could hardly bring herself to think of him, how he would feel about her behavior now; how concerned he would be. He’d promised to “protect” her—as a young husband he’d promised many things—but of course he had not been able to protect her from his own mortality. She’d been a girl when he’d met her, at the University of Michigan. Her hair dark brown, glossy-brown, and her eyes bright and alert. Now, her hair had turned silver. It was really a remarkable hue, she had only to park her car, to walk along the sidewalk—here, on Tumbrel Street—to draw eyes to her, startled and admiring.
    Ma’am you are beautiful!
    Whatever age you are ma’am —you lookin good.
    Ma’am —you someone I know, is you?
    These were women mostly. Smiling black women.
    For this walk in Trenton she wore her good clothes. A widow’s tasteful clothes, black cashmere. And the cloche hat on her silvery hair. And good shoes—expensive Italian shoes she’d purchased in Rome, the previous summer traveling with her historian-husband.
    They’d also gone to Florence, Venice, Milano, Delphi. Her husband had brought along one of his numberless guidebooks—this one titled Mysteries of Delphi. She’d been astonished to see, superimposed upon photographs of the great ruined sites, color transparencies indicating the richness of color of the original sites—primary colors of red and blue—and extraordinary ornamental detail that suggested human specificity instead of “classic” simplicity. Of course, Agnes should have known, but had never thought until her husband explained to her, that the ancient temples weren’t classics of austerity—pearl-colored, luminous, stark—but