1967

Joyce Carol Oates

Where Are You Going,
Where Have You Been?
FROM EpochTo Bob Dylan

HER NAME WAS Connie. She was fifteen and she had a quick nervous
giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors, or checking
other people’s faces to make sure her own was all right. Her mother,
who noticed everything and knew everything and who hadn’t muchreason any longer to look at her own face, always scolded Connie about
it. “Stop gawking at yourself, who are you? You think you're so pretty?”
she would say. Connie would raise her eyebrows at these familiar complaints and look right through her mother, into a shadowy vision ofherself as she was right at that moment: she knew she was pretty andthat was everything. Her mother had been pretty once too, if you could
believe those old snapshots in the album, but now her looks were gone
and that was why she was always after Connie.
“Why don’t you keep your room clean like your sister? How’ve you
got your hair fixed— what the hell stinks? Hair spray? You don’t see
your sister using that junk.”
Her sister June was twenty-four and still lived at home. She was asecretary in the high school Connie attended, and if that wasn’t bad
enough — with her in the same building — she was so plain andchunky and steady that Connie had to hear her praised all the time byher mother and her mother’s sisters. June did this, June did that, she

saved money and helped clean the house and cooked and Connie
couldn't do a thing, her mind was all filled with trashy daydreams. Theirfather was away at work most of the time and when he came home hewanted supper and he read the newspaper at supper and after supper heWhere Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

451

went to bed. He didn’t bother talking much to them, but around hisbent head Connie’s mother kept picking at her until Connie wished hermother were dead and she herself were dead and it were all over. “Shemakes me want to throw up sometimes,” she complained to her friends.
She had a high, breathless, amused voice which made everything she
said sound a little forced, whether it was sincere or not.
There was one good thing: June went places with girlfriends of hers,
girls who were just as plain and steady as she, and so when Connie
wanted to do that her mother had no objections. The father of Connie’s
best girlfriend drove the girls the three miles to town and left them off
at a shopping plaza, so that they could talk through the stores or go to amovie, and when he came to pick them up again at eleven he neverbothered to ask what they had done.
They must have been familiar sights, walking around that shopping
plaza in their shorts and flat ballerina slippers that always scuffed thesidewalk, with charm bracelets jingling on their thin wrists; they would
lean together to whisper and laugh secretly if someone passed by whoamused or interested them. Connie had long dark blond hair that drew
anyone’s eye to it, and she wore part of it pulled up on her head andpuffed out and the rest of it she let fall down her back. She wore apullover jersey blouse that looked one way when she was at home andanother way when she was away from home. Everything about her had
two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home:
her walk that could be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough tomake anyone think she was hearing music in her head, her mouthwhich was pale and smirking most of the time, but bright and pink onthese evenings out, her laugh which was cynical and drawling at home
— “Ha, ha, very funny” — but high-pitched and nervous anywhere
else, like the jingling of the charms on her bracelet.
Sometimes they did go shopping or to a movie, but sometimes theywent across the highway, ducking fast across the busy road, to a drive-in
restaurant where older kids hung out. The restaurant was shaped like a
big bottle, though squatter than a real bottle, and on its cap was a
revolving figure of a grinning boy who held a hamburger aloft. One
night in midsummer they ran across, breathless with daring, and rightaway someone leaned out a car window and invited them over, but it
was just a boy from high school they didn’t like. It made them feel good
to be able to ignore him. They went up through the maze of parked andcruising cars to the bright-lit, fly-infested restaurant, their faces pleased
and expectant as if they were entering a sacred building that loomed out

452

JOYCE CAROL OATESof the night to give them what haven and what blessing they yearned
for. They sat at the counter and crossed their legs at the ankles, theirthin shoulders rigid with excitement, and listened to the music thatmade everything so good: the music was always in the background likemusic at a church service, it was something to depend upon.
A boy named Eddie came in to talk with them. He sat backward on
his stool, turning himself jerkily around in semicircles and then stopping and turning again, and after a while he asked Connie if she would
like something to eat. She said she did and so she tapped her friend’s
arm on her way out — her friend pulled her face up into a brave droll
look —- and Connie said she would meet her at eleven, across the way.
“I just hate to leave her like that,” Connie said earnestly, but the boy said
that she wouldn’t be alone for long. So they went out to his car and on
the way Connie couldn’t help but let her eyes wander over the windshields and faces all around her, her face gleaming with a joy that had
nothing to do with Eddie or even this place; it might have been themusic. She drew her shoulders up and sucked in her breath with thepure pleasure of being alive, and just at that moment she happened toglance at a face just a few feet from hers. It was a boy with shaggy black
hair, in a convertible jalopy painted gold. He stared at her and then his
lips widened into a grin. Connie slit her eyes at him and turned away,
but she couldn't help glancing back and there he was still watching her.
He wagged a finger and laughed and said, “Gonna get you, baby,” andConnie turned away again without Eddie noticing anything.
She spent three hours with him, at the restaurant where they ate
hamburgers and drank Cokes in wax cups that were always sweating,and then down an alley a mile or so away, and when he left her off at fiveto eleven only the movie house was still open at the plaza. Her girlfriend
was there, talking with a boy. When Connie came up the two girls
smiled at each other and Connie said, “How was the movie?” and thegirl said, “You should know.” They rode off with the girl’s father, sleepy
and pleased, and Connie couldn’t help but look at the darkened shopping plaza with its big empty parking lot and its signs that were faded
and ghostly now, and over at the drive-in restaurant where cars werestill circling tirelessly. She couldn’t hear the music at this distance.
Next morning June asked her how the movie was and Connie said,“$0-SO.”She and that girl and occasionally another girl went out several times
a week that way, and the rest of the time Connie spent around the house— it was summer vacation — getting in her mother’s way and thinking,4

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

453

dreaming, about the boys she met. But all the boys fell back and dissolved into a single face that was not even a face, but an idea, a feeling,

mixed up with the urgent insistent pounding of the music and thehumid night air of July. Connie’s mother kept dragging her back to the
daylight by finding things for her to do or saying, suddenly, “What’s thisabout the Pettinger girl?”
And Connie would say nervously, “Oh, her. That dope.” She always
drew thick clear lines between herself and such girls, and her motherwas simple and kindly enough to believe her. Her mother was so simple,
Connie thought, that it was maybe cruel to fool her so much. Her
mother went scuffling around the house in old bedroom slippers andcomplained over the telephone to one sister about the other, then theother called up and the two of them complained about the third one. If
June’s name was mentioned her mother’s tone was approving, and if
Connie’s name was mentioned it was disapproving. This did not reallymean she disliked Connie and actually Connie thought that her motherpreferred her to June because she was prettier, but the two of them kept
up a pretense of exasperation, a sense that they were tugging and struggling over something of little value to either of them. Sometimes, overcoffee, they were almost friends, but something would come up —some vexation that was like a fly buzzing suddenly around their heads— and their faces went hard with contempt.
One Sunday Connie got up at eleven — none of them bothered withchurch — and washed her hair so that it could dry all day long, in thesun. Her parents and sister were going to a barbecue at an aunt’s houseand Connie said no, she wasn’t interested, rolling her eyes to let her
mother know just what she thought of it. “Stay home alone then,” hermother said sharply. Connie sat out back in a lawn chair and watchedthem drive away, her father quiet and bald, hunched around so that hecould back the car out, her mother with a look that was still angry andnot at all softened through the windshield, and in the back seat poor old
June all dressed up as if she didn’t know what a barbecue was, with all

the running yelling kids and the flies. Connie sat with her eyes closed in
the sun, dreaming and dazed with the warmth about her as if this werea kind of love, the caresses of love, and her mind slipped over onto
thoughts of the boy she had been with the night before and how nice hehad been, how sweet it always was, not the way someone like June
would suppose but sweet, gentle, the way it was in movies and promisedin songs; and when she opened her eyes she hardly knew where she was,the back yard ran off into weeds and a fence-line of trees and behind it

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JOYCE CAROL OATES

the sky was perfectly blue and still. The asbestos “ranch house” that was
now three years old startled her — it looked small. She shook her headas if to get awake.
It was too hot. She went inside the house and turned on the radio todrown out the quiet. She sat on the edge of her bed, barefoot, andlistened for an hour and a half to a program called XYZ Sunday Jamboree, record after record of hard, fast, shrieking songs she sang along
with, interspersed by exclamations from “Bobby King”: “An’ look here
you girls at Napoleon’s — Son and Charley want you to pay real close
attention to this song coming up!”
And Connie paid close attention herself, bathed in a glow of slowpulsed joy that seemed to rise mysteriously out of the music itself andlay languidly about the airless little room, breathed in and breathed out
with each gentle rise and fall of her chest.
After a while she heard a car coming up the drive. She sat up at once,
startled, because it couldn't be her father so soon. The gravel kept
crunching all the way in from the road — the driveway was long — andConnie ran to the window. It was a car she didn’t know. It was an open
jalopy, painted a bright gold that caught the sunlight opaquely. Her
heart began to pound and her fingers snatched at her hair, checking it,
and she whispered “Christ. Christ,” wondering how bad she looked. The
car came to a stop at the side door and the horn sounded four short taps
as if this were a signal Connie knew.
She went into the kitchen and approached the door slowly, then hungout the screen door, her bare toes curling down off the step. There were
two boys in the car and now she recognized the driver: he had shaggy,
shabby black hair that looked crazy as a wig and he was grinning at her.
“T ain't late, am I?” he said.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Connie said.
“Toldja I'd be out, didn’t I?”“I don’t even know who you are.”
She spoke sullenly, careful to show no interest or pleasure, and hespoke in a fast bright monotone. Connie looked past him to the otherboy, taking her time. He had fair brown hair, with a lock that fell onto
his forehead. His sideburns gave him a fierce, embarrassed look, but
so far he hadn’t even bothered to glance at her. Both boys wore sunglasses. The driver’s glasses were metallic and mirrored everything inminiature.
“You wanta come for a ride?” he said.
Connie smirked and let her hair fall loose over one shoulder.

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

455“Don’tcha like my car? New paint job,” he said. “Hey.”“What?”“You're cute.”
She pretended to fidget, chasing flies away from the door.
“Don'tcha believe me, or what?” he said.
“Look, I don’t even know who you are,” Connie said in disgust.
“Hey, Ellie’s got a radio, see. Mine’s broke down.” He lifted his
friend’s arm and showed her the little transistor the boy was holding,and now Connie began to hear the music. It was the same program thatwas playing inside the house.
“Bobby King?” she said.
“T listen to him all the time. I think he’s great.”“He’s kind of great,” Connie said reluctantly.
“Listen, that guy’s great. He knows where the action is.”Connie blushed a little, because the glasses made it impossible for her
to see just what this boy was looking at. She couldn't decide if she liked
him or if he was just a jerk, and so she dawdled in the doorway andwouldn’t come down or go back inside. She said, “What’s all that stuff
painted on your car?”“Car’tcha read it?” He opened the door very carefully, as if he wasafraid it might fall off. He slid out just as carefully, planting his feetfirmly on the ground, the tiny metallic world in his glasses slowing
down like gelatine hardening and in the midst of it Connie’s brightgreen blouse. “This here is my name, to begin with,” he said. ARNOLDFRIEND was written in tarlike black letters on the side, with a drawing
of a round grinning face that reminded Connie of a pumpkin, except itwore sunglasses. “I wanta introduce myself, ’'m Arnold Friend andthat’s my real name and I’m gonna be your friend, honey, and inside the
car’s Ellie Oscar, he’s kinda shy.” Ellie brought his transistor radio up tohis shoulder and balanced it there. “Now these numbers are a secretcode, honey,’ Arnold Friend explained. He read off the numbers 33, 19,

17 and raised his eyebrows at her to see what she thought of that, but she
didn’t think much of it. The left rear fender had been smashed andaround it was written, on the gleaming gold background: poNE BY
CRAZY WOMAN DRIVER. Connie had to laugh at that. Arnold Friend
was pleased at her laughter and looked up at her. “Around the otherside’s a lot more — you wanta come and see them.”“No.”“Why not?”“Why should I?”

456

JOYCE CAROL OATES“Don’tcha wanta see what’s on the car? Don'tcha wanta go for aride?”“T don’t know.”“Why not?”“Tve got things to do.”“Like what?”“Things.”
He laughed as if she had said something funny. He slapped his thighs.
He was standing in a strange way, leaning back against the car as if hewere balancing himself. He wasn’t tall, only an inch or so taller than
she would be if she came down to him. Connie liked the way he wasdressed, which was the way all of them dressed: tight faded jeans stuffed
into black, scuffed boots, a belt that pulled his waist in and showed how
tan he was, and a white pullover shirt that was a little soiled and showed
the hard small muscles of his arms and shoulders. He looked as if heprobably did hard work, lifting and carrying things. Even his necklooked muscular. And his face was a familiar face, somehow: the jaw
and chin and cheeks slightly darkened, because he hadn’t shaved for a
day or two, and the nose long and hawklike, sniffing as if she were atreat he was going to gobble up and it was all a joke.
“Connie, you ain’t telling the truth. This is your day set aside for aride with me and you know it,” he said, still laughing. The way hestraightened and recovered from his fit of laughing showed that it had
been all fake.
“How do you know what my name is?” she said suspiciously.
“It’s Connie.”“Maybe and maybe not.”“I know my Connie,” he said, wagging his finger. Now she remembered him even better, back at the restaurant, and her cheeks warmed at
the thought of how she sucked in her breath just at the moment she
passed him — how she must have looked to him. And he had remembered her. “Ellie and I come out here especially for you,” he said. “Ellie
can sit in back. How about it?”
“Where?”“Where what?”“Where’re we going?”
He looked at her. He took off the sunglasses and she saw how pale theskin around his eyes was, like holes that were not in shadow but insteadin light. His eyes were like chips of broken glass that catch the light in anWhere Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

457

amiable way. He smiled. It was as if the idea of going for a ride somewhere, to some place, was a new idea to him.
“Just for a ride, Connie sweetheart.”“I never said my name was Connie,” she said.
“But I know what it is. I know your name and all about you, lots ofthings,” Arnold Friend said. He had not moved yet but stood still lean-ing back against the side of his jalopy. “I took a special interest in you,such a pretty girl, and found out all about you like I know your parents and sister are gone somewheres and I know where and how longthey’re going to be gone, and I know who you were with last night, andyour best girlfriend’s name is Betty. Right?”
He spoke in a simple lilting voice, exactly as if he were reciting thewords to a song. His smile assured her that everything was fine. In the
car Ellie turned up the volume on his radio and did not bother to lookaround at them.
“Ellie can sit in the back seat,’ Arnold Friend said. He indicated his
friend with a casual jerk of his chin, as if Ellie did not count and sheshould not bother with him.
“How'd you find out all that stuff?” Connie said.
“Listen: Betty Schultz and Tony Fitch and Jimmy Pettinger andNancy Pettinger,” he said, in a chant. “Raymond Stanley and Bob Hutter —”“Do you know all those kids?”“IT know everybody.”“Look, you're kidding. You're not from around here.”“Sure.”“But — how come we never saw you before?”“Sure you saw me before,” he said. He looked down at his boots, as if
he were a little offended. “You just don’t remember.”“I guess I’d remember you,” Connie said.
“Yeah?” He looked up at this, beaming. He was pleased. He began tomark time with the music from Ellie’s radio, tapping his fists lightly
together. Connie looked away from his smile to the car, which waspainted so bright it almost hurt her eyes to look at it. She looked at that
name, ARNOLD FRIEND. And up at the front fender was an expressionthat was familiar — MAN THE FLYING SAUCERS. It was an expression
kids had used the year before, but didn’t use this year. She looked at it
for a while as if the words meant something to her that she did not yet
know.

458

JOYCE CAROL OATES“What're you thinking about? Huh?” Arnold Friend demanded. “Notworried about your hair blowing around in the car, are you?”“No.”“Think I maybe can’t drive good?”“How do I know?”“You're a hard girl to handle. How come?” he said. “Don’t you know
I’m your friend? Didn’t you see me put my sign in the air when you
walked by?”
“What sign?”“My sign.” And he drew an X in the air, leaning out toward her. They
were maybe ten feet apart. After his hand fell back to his side the X wasstill in the air, almost visible. Connie let the screen door close and stood
perfectly still inside it, listening to the music from her radio and theboy’s blend together. She stared at Arnold Friend. He stood there so
stiffly relaxed, pretending to be relaxed, with one hand idly on the door
handle as if he were keeping himself up that way and had no intentionof ever moving again. She recognized most things about him, the tightjeans that showed his thighs and buttocks and the greasy leather boots
and the tight shirt, and even that slippery friendly smile of his, thatsleepy dreamy smile that all the boys used to get across ideas they didn’t
want to put into words. She recognized all this and also the singsong
way he talked, slightly mocking, kidding, but serious and a little melancholy, and she recognized the way he tapped one fist against the other inhomage to the perpetual music behind him. But all these things did notcome together.
She said suddenly, “Hey, how old are you?”His smile faded. She could see then that he wasn’t a kid, he was mucholder — thirty, maybe more. At this knowledge her heart began topound faster.
“That’s a crazy thing to ask. Can’tcha see I’m your own age?”“Like hell you are.”“Or maybe a coupla years older, I’m eighteen.”“Eighteen?” she said doubtfully.
He grinned to reassure her and lines appeared at the corners of his
mouth. His teeth were big and white. He grinned so broadly his eyes
became slits and she saw how thick the lashes were, thick and black as if
painted with a black tarlike material. Then he seemed to become embarrassed, abruptly, and looked over his shoulder at Ellie. “Him, he’s
crazy,” he said. “Ain’t he a riot, he’s a nut, a real character.” Ellie was still
listening to the music. His sunglasses told nothing about what he wasWhere Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

459

thinking. He wore a bright orange shirt unbuttoned halfway to show hischest, which was a pale, bluish chest and not muscular like Arnold
Friend’s. His shirt collar was turned up all around and the very tips ofthe collar pointed out past his chin as if they were protecting him. He
was pressing the transistor radio up against his ear and sat there in akind of daze, right in the sun.
“He’s kinda strange,” Connie said.
“Hey, she says you're kinda strange! Kinda strange!” Arnold Friend
cried. He pounded on the car to get Ellie’s attention. Ellie turned for the
first time and Connie saw with shock that he wasn’t a kid either — hehad a fair, hairless face, cheeks reddened slightly as if the veins grew too
close to the surface of his skin, the face of a forty-year-old baby. Connie
felt a wave of dizziness rise in her at this sight and she stared at him as if
waiting for something to change the shock of the moment, make it all
right again. Ellie’s lips kept shaping words, mumbling along with thewords blasting in his ear.
“Maybe you two better go away,” Connie said faintly.
“What? How come?” Arnold Friend cried. “We come out here to takeyou for a ride. It’s Sunday.” He had the voice of the man on the radio
now. It was the same voice, Connie thought. “Don’tcha know it’s Sunday all day and honey, no matter who you were with last night today
you're with Arnold Friend and don’t you forget it! — Maybe you better
step out here,” he said, and this last was in a different voice. It was a little
flatter, as if the heat was finally getting to him.
“No. I got things to do.”“Hey”

“You two better leave.”“We ain’t leaving until you come with us.”“Like hell I am —”“Connie, don’t fool around with me. I mean, I mean, don’t foolaround,” he said, shaking his head. He laughed incredulously. He placed
his sunglasses on top of his head, carefully, as if he were indeed wearing a wig, and brought the stems down behind his ears. Connie stared
at him, another wave of dizziness and fear rising in her so that for a
moment he wasn’t even in focus but was just a blur, standing there
against his gold car, and she had the idea that he had driven up thedriveway all right but had come from nowhere before that and belonged
nowhere and that everything about him and even about the music thatwas so familiar to her was only half real.
“If my father comes and sees you —”460

JOYCE CAROL OATES“He ain't coming. He’s at a barbecue.”“How do you know that?”“Aunt Tillie’s. Right now theyre— uh — they're drinking. Sitting
around,” he said vaguely, squinting as if he were staring all the way totown and over to Aunt Tillie’s back yard. Then the vision seemed to getclear and he nodded energetically. “Yeah. Sitting around. There’s yoursister in a blue dress, huh? And high heels, the poor sad bitch — nothing like you, sweetheart! And your mother’s helping some fat woman
with the corn, they’re cleaning the corn — husking the corn —”“What fat woman?” Connie cried.
“How do I know what fat woman, I don’t know every goddam fat
woman in the world!” Arnold Friend laughed.
“Oh, that’s Mrs. Hornby . .. Who invited her?” Connie said. She felt alittle light-headed. Her breath was coming quickly.
“She’s too fat. I don’t like them fat. I like them the way you are,honey,” he said, smiling sleepily at her. They stared at each other for awhile, through the screen door. He said softly, “Now what you're goingto do is this: you’re going to come out that door. You're going to sit up
front with me and Ellie’s going to sit in the back, the hell with Ellie,
right? This isn’t Ellie’s date. Youre my date. ’'m your lover, honey.”“What? You're crazy —”“Yes, I’m your lover. You don’t know what that is but you will,” hesaid. “I know that too. I know all about you. But look: it’s real niceand you couldn't ask for nobody better than me, or more polite. I always keep my word. I'll tell you how it is, ’'m always nice at first, thefirst time. Pll hold you so tight you won't think you have to try to getaway or pretend anything because you'll know you can’t. And Pll comeinside you where it’s all secret and you'll give in to me and you'll loveme —”“Shut up! You're crazy!” Connie said. She backed away from the door.
She put her hands against her ears as if she’d heard something terrible,
something not meant for her. “People don’t talk like that, you’re crazy,”she muttered. Her heart was almost too big now for her chest and its
pumping made sweat break out all over her. She looked out to see
Arnold Friend pause and then take a step toward the porch lurching. He
almost fell. But, like a clever drunken man, he managed to catch hisbalance. He wobbled in his high boots and grabbed hold of one of theporch posts.

“Honey?” he said. “You still listening?”“Get the hell out of here!”Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

461“Be nice, honey. Listen.”“Tm going to call the police —”He wobbled again and out of the side of his mouth came a fast spat
curse, an aside not meant for her to hear. But even this “Christ!”sounded forced. Then he began to smile again. She watched this smilecome, awkward as if he were smiling from inside a mask. His whole face
was a mask, she thought wildly, tanned down onto his throat but thenrunning out as if he had plastered makeup on his face but had forgotten
about his throat.
“Honey —? Listen, here’s how it is. I always tell the truth and I
promise you this: I ain't coming in that house after you.”“You better not! I’m going to call the police if you — if you don’t —”“Honey,” he said, talking right through her voice, “honey, I’m notcoming in there but you are coming out here. You know why?”
She was panting. The kitchen looked like a place she had never seen
before, some room she had run inside but which wasn’t good enough,wasn't going to help her. The kitchen window had never had a curtain,
after three years, and there were dishes in the sink for her to do —probably — and if you ran your hand across the table you'd probably
feel something sticky there.
“You listening, honey? Hey?”“— going to call the police —”“Soon as you touch the phone I don’t need to keep my promise andcan come inside. You won't want that.”
She rushed forward and tried to lock the door. Her fingers wereshaking. “But why lock it,” Arnold Friend said gently, talking right into
her face. “It’s just a screen door. It’s just nothing.” One of his boots was
at a strange angle, as if his foot wasn’t in it. It pointed out to the left,bent at the ankle. “I mean, anybody can break through a screen door
and glass and wood and iron or anything else if he needs to, anybody at
all and specially Arnold Friend. If the place got lit up with a fire honeyyoud come runnin’ out into my arms, right into my arms an’ safe athome — like you knew I was your lover and’d stopped fooling around.
I don’t mind a nice shy girl but I don’t like no fooling around.” Part ofthose words were spoken with a slight rhythmic lilt, and Connie somehow recognized them — the echo of a song from last year, about a girlrushing into her boyfriend’s arms and coming home again —Connie stood barefoot on the linoleum floor, staring at him. “Whatdo you want?” she whispered.
“I want you,” he said.

462

JOYCE CAROLOATES“What?”“Seen you that night and thought, that’s the one, yes sir. I neverneeded to look any more.”“But my father’s coming back. He’s coming to get me. I had to wash
my hair first —” She spoke in a dry, rapid voice, hardly raising it for him
to hear.
“No, your Daddy is not coming and yes, you had to wash your hairand you washed it for me. It’s nice and shining and all for me, I thankyou, sweetheart,” he said, with a mock bow, but again he almost lost hisbalance. He had to bend and adjust his boots. Evidently his feet did not
go all the way down; the boots must have been stuffed with something
so that he would seem taller. Connie stared out at him and behind him
Ellie in the car, who seemed to be looking off toward Connie’s right, ©
into nothing. This Ellie said, pulling the words out of the air one after
another as if he were just discovering them, “You want me to pull out
the phone?”“Shut your mouth and keep it shut,” Arnold Friend said, his face red
from bending over or maybe from embarrassment because Connie hadseen his boots. “This ain't none of your business.”“What — what are you doing? What do you want?” Connie said. “If 1
call the police they'll get you, they'll arrest you —”“Promise was not to come in unless you touch that phone, and I'll
keep that promise,” he said. He resumed his erect position and tried toforce his shoulders back. He sounded like a hero in a movie, declaring
something important. He spoke too loudly and it was as if he werespeaking to someone behind Connie. “I ain't made plans for coming inthat house where I don’t belong but just for you to come out to me, theway you should. Don’t you know who I am?”“Youre crazy,” she whispered. She backed away from the door but did
not want to go into another part of the house, as if this would give him
permission to come through the door. “What do you . . . You're crazy,
you...”“Huh? What’re you saying, honey?”
Her eyes darted everywhere in the kitchen. She could not remember
what it was, this room.
“This is how it is, honey: you come out and we’ll drive away, have anice ride. But if you don’t come out we’re gonna wait till your people
come home and then they’re all going to get it.”“You want that telephone pulled out?” Ellie said. He held the radioWhere Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

463

away from his ear and grimaced, as if without the radio the air was toomuch for him.
“T toldja shut up, Ellie,” Arnold Friend said, “you're deaf, get a hearing aid, right? Fix yourself up. This little girl’s no trouble and’s gonna be
nice to me, so Ellie keep to yourself, this ain't your date — right? Don’t
hem in on me. Don’t hog. Don’t crush. Don’t bird dog. Don’t trailme,” he said in a rapid meaningless voice, as if he were running throughall the expressions he’d learned but was no longer sure which one ofthem was in style, then rushing on to new ones, making them up withhis eyes closed, “Don’t crawl under my fence, don’t squeeze in mychipmunk hole, don’t sniff my glue, suck my popsicle, keep your own
greasy fingers on yourself!” He shaded his eyes and peered in at Connie,
who was backed against the kitchen table. “Don’t mind him honeyhe’s just a creep. He’s a dope. Right? I’m the boy for you and like I said
you come out here nice like a lady and give me your hand, and nobody
else gets hurt, I mean, your nice old bald-headed daddy and yourmummy and your sister in her high heels. Because listen: why bringthem in this?”“Leave me alone,” Connie whispered.
“Hey, you know that old woman down the road, the one with thechickens and stuff — you know her?”“She’s dead!”“Dead? What? You know her?” Arnold Friend said.
“She’s dead —”“Don't you like her?”“She’s dead — she’s — she isn’t here any more —”“But don’t you like her, I mean, you got something against her? Somegrudge or something?” Then his voice dipped as if he were conscious ofa rudeness. He touched the sunglasses perched on top of his head as if
to make sure they were still there. “Now you be a good girl.”“What are you going to do?”“Just two things, or maybe three,” Arnold Friend said. “But I promise
it won't last long and you'll like me the way you get to like people youre
close to. You will. It’s all over for you here, so come on out. You don’t_want your people in any trouble, do you?”
She turned and bumped against a chair or something, hurting herleg, but she ran into the back room and picked up the telephone. Something roared in her ear, a tiny roaring, and she was so sick with fearthat she could do nothing but listen to it — the telephone was clammy

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.

JOYCE

CAROL

OATES

and very heavy and her fingers groped down to the dial but were too
weak to touch it. She began to scream into the phone, into the roaring.
She cried out, she cried for her mother, she felt her breath start jerking
back and forth in her lungs as if it were something Arnold Friend were
stabbing her with again and again with no tenderness. A noisy sorrowful wailing rose all about her and she was locked inside it the way she
was locked inside this house.
After a while she could hear again. She was sitting on the floor withher wet back against the wall.
Arnold Friend was saying from the door, “That’s a good girl. Put thephone back.”
She kicked the phone away from her.
“No, honey. Pick it up. Put it back right.”
She picked it up and put it back. The dial tone stopped.
“That’s a good girl. Now you come outside.”
She was hollow with what had been fear, but what was now justan emptiness. All that screaming had blasted it out of her. She sat, one
leg cramped under her, and deep inside her brain was something likea pinpoint of light that kept going and would not let her relax. She
thought, I’m not going to see my mother again. She thought, I’m notgoing to sleep in my bed again. Her bright green blouse was all wet.
Arnold Friend said, in a gentle-loud voice that was like a stage voice,“The place where you came from ain’t there any more, and where you
had in mind to go is canceled out. This place you are now — inside yourdaddy’s house — is nothing but a cardboard box I can knock down any
time. You know that and always did know it. You hear me?”
She thought, I have got to think. I have to know what to do.
“We'll go out to a nice field, out in the country here where it smells so
nice and it’s sunny,” Arnold Friend said. “I'll have my arms tight aroundyou so you won't need to try to get away and I'll show you what love islike, what it does. The hell with this house! It looks solid all right,” hesaid. He ran a fingernail down the screen and the noise did not makeConnie shiver, as it would have the day before. “Now put your hand on
your heart, honey. Feel that? That feels solid too but we know better, benice to me, be sweet like you can because what else is there for a girl likeyou but to be sweet and pretty and give in? — and get away before her
people come back?”
She felt her pounding heart. Her hand seemed to enclose it. She
thought for the first time in her life that it was nothing that was hers,

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465

that belonged to her, but just a pounding, living thing inside this bodythat wasn’t really hers either.
“You don’t want them to get hurt,” Arnold Friend went on. “Now getup, honey. Get up all by yourself”
She stood.
“Now turn this way. That’s right. Come over here to me — Ellie, putthat away, didn’t I tell you? You dope. You miserable creepy dope,”
Arnold Friend said. His words were not angry but only part of an
incantation. The incantation was kindly. “Now come out through the
kitchen to me honey and let’s see a smile, try it, you're a brave sweet little
girl and now they’re eating corn and hot dogs cooked to bursting overan outdoor fire, and they don’t know one thing about you and never did
and honey youre better than them because not a one of them would
have done this for you.”
Connie felt the linoleum under her feet; it was cool. She brushed herhair back out of her eyes. Arnold Friend let go of the post tentatively
and opened his arms for her, his elbows pointing in toward each otherand his wrists limp, to show that this was an embarrassed embrace anda little mocking, he didn’t want to make her self-conscious.
She put out her hand against the screen. She watched herself push thedoor slowly open as if she were safe back somewhere in the other doorway, watching this body and this head of long hair moving out into thesunlight where Arnold Friend waited.
“My sweet little blue-eyed girl,” he said, in a half-sung sigh that had
nothing to do with her brown eyes but was taken up just the same by
the vast sunlit reaches of the land behind him and on all sides of him, somuch land that Connie had never seen before and did not recognize
except to know that she was going to it.