My Heart Laid Bare

by Joyce Carol Oates

  So thoroughly repulsive an episode, he forgets it immediately upon waking; as, in life, he managed to forget it, many years ago.

  3.

  Why was handsome young Abraham Licht so angry, now that he knew himself in love for the first time in his life?

  The year was 1884, Abraham Licht was twenty-three years old, an agent for Pyramid Mail-Order Watches & Jewelry, Ltd. (headquarters and “warehouse” in Port Oriskany, New York); a fledgling journalist for the Port Oriskany Republican, whose publisher was his mentor; an actor of amateur status, yet “considerable histrionic gifts” (this, to quote from a review that appeared in the Republican, following a local production of the popular melodrama The Wayward Husband, in which Abraham Licht played a supporting role); a high-spirited well-bred gregarious fellow, mature for his years, a graduate, it was said, of Harvard College (or was it Yale?), who knew wines, horses, poker, music, politics—or, in any case, could speak zestfully on these subjects, and on numberless others.

  What, precisely, were Abraham Licht’s origins?—the organizer of Pyramid Ltd. (himself a youthful thirty-two years of age) believed his young friend hailed from “somewhere in the East”—Massachusetts or Connecticut, perhaps; the publisher of the Republican, being originally from the Chautauqua Valley himself, believed he could hear, in curious dissonant tones, the nasal accent of the Valley; Mrs. Arabella Jenkins, whose lover he became, was entrusted with his secret—that following an alcoholic breakdown of his wealthy father, a Boston banker, of high social prominence (“Licht” being but an approximation of his Teutonic name), the young man had been disowned: a fortune held in trust for him, prized away by devious lawyerly means; his health so severely, if temporarily, shattered, he had been forced to his shame to withdraw from Harvard Divinity School with but a single semester remaining before graduation.

  When he arrived in Port Oriskany by day coach, in the fall of ’83, he knew no one in the entire city of twenty-eight thousand persons, and had no letters of introduction or recommendation. Yet within six months, it might be said that he knew everyone worth knowing. The attractive young bachelor dined as a guest at the Coliseum Club, and in numerous private homes (among them the homes of the mayor of Port Oriskany, and the pastor of the First Congregational Church, and the most prominent funeral director in the city, and the publisher of the newspaper); he sang in the choir of the Congregational Church, and attended all services and rehearsals faithfully; he participated in amateur theatrical and musical evenings, content to assume minor roles, and not to upstage local talents; he soon displayed his amiable gifts for poker, as one who lost as cheerfully as he won, and did not win too frequently; he knew Thoroughbred horses, though he rarely allowed himself to place bets, as, in his eyes, doing so degraded the Sport of Kings; while basking in the attentions of charming young women, he did not slight their mothers, or elder sisters; he so impressed the publisher of the Port Oriskany Republican with his shrewd good sense as to ways and means of drumming up more advertising revenue, and presenting favored politicians in as human and seductive a light as possible, he might well have had a career there, had the Pyramid Mail-Order business been less challenging, and his own temperament less restless . . . .

  (Though too young to be taken seriously by the party, yet Abraham Licht was approached upon several occasions as to his plans for the future: did he intend to remain in Port Oriskany, did he hope to marry a local girl and settle down, had he any interest in . . . serving the public? The Republicans had lately suffered considerable losses, following the surprising election of Cleveland, a Democrat, as governor of the state, on a rabble-rousing “reform” ticket; fresh blood was badly needed. The chairman of the state Republican caucus took him aside, and clapped him on the shoulder, and confided in him that, if he had a penchant for The Game—“and that is all there is in politics, son, ‘success’ being but Dead Sea fruit”—he might well make his way up the ladder of county and state offices; for vacancies regularly appeared from year to year as men died off, or were retired, or slipped from favor with the public. To this friendly overture, as to numerous others made to him, young Licht replied with great enthusiasm and pleasure, though with an air of evasiveness; for, as he admitted, his temperament was restless, and he hoped for more travel and adventure in life, before settling down with a wife and family.)

  THEN, WHETHER BY Destiny or crude Accident, it happened that Abraham Licht fell passionately in love with Mrs. Arabella Jenkins, the young widow of one prominent Port Oriskany attorney, and the suspected mistress of another; and his flourishing career in that city came to an abrupt end.

  The occasion of their meeting was a musical Thursday evening at the Coliseum Club, where German lieder were being sung with melancholy spirit, and such perennial favorites of the drawing room as “The Angel’s Whisper,” “Come Back to Erin,” and “Jeanie, with the Light Brown Hair.” The most applauded event of the evening, however, was a piece by Schubert, for mixed chorus (three male voices, three female), piano, and violin, in which the brunette beauty Mrs. Jenkins shone to advantage, singing in a deep, rich, full, unfaltering alto voice, and, with seeming artlessness, commanding the attention of the entire room. Was she not, with her thick-lashed brown eyes, and her gleaming black hair, and her Junoesque proportions, a splendid woman indeed?

  Abraham Licht stared, and stared, at Arabella Jenkins; and listened so intensely to her, the voices of the others faded.

  Why, what could it mean—that her eyes moved so carelessly upon him, and drifted past?

  He did not know her, but knew of her: knew certain romantic tales and rumors of her: that she had lost her well-to-do husband after only a few years of marriage, that she was childless, and showed little inclination to remarry; that she had lately become the secret beloved of a middle-aged Port Oriskany attorney, whose influence in the city was considerable.

  A fallen woman, then, of a sort; yet, very clearly the undisputed queen of such gatherings as these; and one who, if Abraham Licht judged her correctly, thought rather highly of herself, basking in the applause she made a pretty show of disclaiming. (Yet, how sweet the hand-clapping and shouts of “Bravo!” surely were, to a woman unfettered by tiresome notions of modesty: knowing herself supremely herself: and calibrating her value by way of the admiring faces that surrounded her.)

  Abraham Licht, standing apart, continued to stare, unsmiling, at Mrs. Jenkins; joining but mechanically in the applause; feeling for her so ambiguous an emotion, or sensation, he could not have said if it was resentment, or tenderness, or confused anger.

  And what did it mean, that she dared to glance so casually at him—and then away?

  (AS TO YOUNG Licht’s previous emotional life, his love-experiences, romances, courtships, et al.—it seemed that he had had none; or did not remember them. For he remembered very little of his past, other than the fact that it was comfortably past, and could have no hold upon the present, let alone the future; and it was his assumption that all men and women shared identical inclinations. Had he made the conscious attempt, which he was unlikely to have done, Abraham could not have recalled any distinct events from his childhood: knowing only what he had been told, by a blacksmith and his family who took him in, that, at the approximate age of ten, he was found wandering sickly and delirious, and evidently amnesiac, on a country road south of the great Muirkirk marsh; in so confused a state, he could not even provide the blacksmith with his name, for several days.)

  Abraham Licht stared, and stared, and suffered a humiliating wave of heat that rose, it seemed, from his very bowels, to suffuse his face in a mottled blush; followed, within the space of a few minutes, by a warring sensation of chill—of cold so very cold, he feared his teeth would begin to chatter. Why, was he ill? Was he mad? Was he himself, to succumb to a schoolboy’s infatuation, for a woman several years his senior, and the possession of another man?

  Ah, how he resented her, beforehand; how bitterly, how proudly, he resented Desire, that it rendered him so very suddenly, incomple
te!

  As for the woman—the evening’s exertions had visibly warmed her, flesh and spirit alike: her rosy skin glowed with an interior heat, her pert upper lip gleamed with moisture, her ample bosom strained against the delicate silk of her bodice, she did, indeed, fairly bask, like a cat, in the effusive praise that lapped about her. And the well-to-do gentleman, her rumored lover, standing close by, with his unknowing wife at his side—he too basked in Arabella Jenkins’s success, as if, by some oblique logic, it were his own.

  “But he is not man enough for her,” Abraham Licht thought, in a spasm of rage. “I shall show him!—I shall show her!”

  Near the end of the evening Abraham Licht approached Arabella Jenkins, to compliment her like all the others on her exquisite alto voice; while staring at her so raptly, without even the formality of a smile, that, being of a sensuous temperament herself, and hardly a fainting virgin, Arabella could not fail to sense the drift of his intention; indeed, the peremptory beat of his desire.

  He informed her in a lowered voice that he would come to see her the next day, and Arabella, rapidly fanning herself, said at once she was sorry, he could not; and Abraham amended, that he would come to her later that night, when the gathering of tiresome old fools and humbugs was dispersed, and the two of them might discuss the subtleties of Schubert’s musical genius in greater privacy.

  “I am very sorry,” Arabella said sharply, with a look of genuine fright, “—but you cannot.”

  (“AH, CAN I not?” says Abraham Licht, “—what is it, dear lady, Abraham Licht cannot do? Is it this—and this—is it this—and yet again this, dear lady, that Abraham Licht of all men cannot do?”)

  IN THAT WAY young Abraham Licht succumbed to the violent passion of love, for the first time in his life; his resentment overlaid, for the most part, by an emotion so intense as to approach delirium—for the woman was infinitely desirable, and the woman was his.

  For, in the very early hours of a March day of 1884, they did become lovers, and unbridled lovers indeed, without an excess of ceremony.

  For, it soon ceased to matter that Abraham Licht was but a youth of twenty-three, and near-penniless; and that Arabella Jenkins was twenty-eight, and possessed of a house and furnishings, and a small bank account.

  For, being besotted on both sides equally, they soon gave no thought whether all the world—which is to say, a select scattering of Port Oriskany citizens—knew of their liaison and condemned it; or marveled at it in secret, as the match of two godly persons, of unusual physical beauty, and personal magnetism, and intelligence, and talent, and rare good luck . . . .

  For, with the triumphant appearance of a man (Abraham Licht), the half-man (Arabella’s middle-aged “protector”) was banished forever; and could make no claim upon her. (“Though it fairly sickens me,” Abraham said to Arabella, in a moment of chagrin, “—to think of a man, any man, even your former husband, touching you as I have touched you.” “Why then, my dear, my darling, please do not think of it,” Arabella begged, covering his warm face with kisses.)

  At length, Love so roused them to defiance, why not declare themselves lovers?—why not, scorning custom, publicly declare themselves not two, but one?—a matching of a sort never before seen in provincial Port Oriskany?

  Why not elope?

  Why not sell Arabella’s property, and move to Manhattan, where each might pursue a career on the stage?—Arabella being gifted in both singing and acting, and Abraham being gifted in acting, and diverse sorts of showmanship? (And his promising baritone voice might be trained.)

  So the lovers planned, and plotted; and saw that Destiny lay all before them, had they but the courage to strike out for new territory. In a voice quivering with emotion, Abraham Licht one evening recited Mark Antony’s great speech to Egypt’s queen—

  Here is my space,

  Kingdoms are clay; our dungy earth alike

  Feeds beast as man; the nobleness of life

  Is to do thus,—when such a mutual pair

  And such a twain can do’t, in which I bind,

  On pain of punishment, the world to know

  We stand up peerless.

  —even as he embraced his beloved Arabella, as if in defiance of their enemies. She was greatly moved, and asked Abraham where he had learned Shakespeare’s verse with such accuracy and feeling; her young lover told her he’d succumbed to Shakespeare’s genius as an undergraduate at Harvard, having fallen ill with an influenza for several weeks one winter, and being confined to his room, with the opportunity of submerging himself in the great tragedies. “For when one is confined in a small space, with no promise of freedom for many days,” Abraham said, with a stiffness of his jaws, and a steely-melancholy glint to his eye as if he were recalling an incarceration more onerous than merely the flu, “—there’s no salvation quite like poetry, and no poetry quite like Shakespeare’s.”

  SO IT HAPPENED that, one April day, the young lovers left Port Oriskany, eloping to Manhattan; and there experienced numerous adventures—as Abraham Licht might one day reveal in his memoir, these were too many, and too motley, to be described in a small space. The essence of it was, Fortune did not smile upon us. Though we shook, and shook, and shook the dice, our lucky number never came up. How was it possible, their hopes for success on Broadway were thwarted repeatedly?—if Arabella was cast for a musical evening in which she excelled, it nonetheless did poorly and closed within a few days; if Abraham succeeded in winning, at last, a supporting role in a play—why, the actors were certain to be betrayed by their producer, and even the “stars” went unpaid. A highly regarded Broadway talent agent took them on—and was exposed by Hearst papers within a few weeks as an exploiter of youthful talent, wanted for bigamy in another state. Within six vertiginous months Arabella’s money ran out and Abraham was forced to swallow his pride and take whatever employment he could, being too proud, as he told Arabella, to cable his family in Boston for aid, even as the couple moved from hotel to hotel, each less sumptuous than the former, and farther from their early euphoric dreams.

  So they found themselves quarreling. And forgiving each other—passionately, tenderly. Yet again quarreling. And again forgiving each other—with an air of desperation. “Hardly a stranger to misfortune, I’m not accustomed to making another share it with me,” Abraham confessed to Arabella. “I feel sickened, ashamed. I feel—less a man.” He might have said, too, that he was accustomed at times of misfortune to moving swiftly, leaving town without a backward glance; he would simply “plot” his way out of difficult financial predicaments; sometimes, when necessity forced his hand, he would disguise himself so casually, yet so ingeniously, “Abraham Licht” was never to be detected. But now, living with Arabella, a woman of pride, integrity and character, and in such intimate, cramped quarters, he couldn’t escape seeing his misery mirrored in her beautiful eyes. And it began to upset him, that Arabella should be passing judgment daily on his worth.

  They quarreled about finances, and where next to move, and why Abraham didn’t humble himself and ask his wealthy family for help: for, as Arabella tearfully pointed out, they could use the plea of her pregnancy—surely Abraham’s father, a gentleman, would take pity on them? Surely he, and Abraham’s mother, a gracious wellborn lady, wouldn’t be so cruel as to reject an unborn grandchild? “Arabella, please. Say no more on this subject,” Abraham said quietly, clenching his jaws. “You know nothing of my people—nothing of our tragic history.”

  Arabella replied, with an air of startling cynicism, “But what ‘history’ isn’t tragic, if you look closely enough?”

  Yet their most bitter quarrels were over what Abraham called Arabella’s faithlessness: her moods of caprice and idleness when, to upset him, she smiled with easy favor upon other men; and always, in Arabella’s vicinity, there were other men. As if any stranger should be raised to her lover’s rank by a warm glance, or a sweet murmured word, or a charming quirk of Arabella’s eyebrow.

  Like many another lover in such a
circumstance, Abraham chastised himself for his weakness. “If only I didn’t love the woman so much! Surely the fault is in me, rather than in her.”

  For Abraham Licht had been born with the acuity of perception that allows us to know that our anger at another is probably nothing apart from our unexpressed anger at ourselves.

  And, as a sexual being, a man must know that while “manliness” is provoked by the female’s physical charms, it is also, consequently, depleted by these charms. The power of Venus Aphrodite. The pagan goddess who tempts men, and exhausts them, through mortal women. The goddess is a ray of brilliant sunshine animating an otherwise lifeless, colorless landscape, gazing out of an individual woman’s eyes, and arousing passion in men which can never be fully satisfied. And, like the ray of sunshine, she passes steadily and inexorably by; bodiless; without substance; without fidelity.

  “And in this crime,” the wounded lover muses, “—is there complicity?”

  IN EARLY SUMMER of ’85, Abraham decided that he and Arabella must quit Manhattan to live in the Chautauqua Valley, that their child might be born in more congenial surroundings; and he himself might make a fresh start in business. “After all,” he told Arabella, with an air of mild bafflement, that his early promise had come to so little, “I’m not yet twenty-five.”

  Arabella said, with her air of subtle reproach in which (unless Abraham imagined it) a sexual invitation lay coiled as a snake, “Twenty-five! Many a human being has been long dead and buried in the earth, and their bones dissolved to dust, by the age of twenty-five.”