My Heart Laid Bare

by Joyce Carol Oates

  He shouted for help, running and staggering.

  He shouted for Thurston—Thurston!—until his throat was raw.

  Now he was ravenous with hunger, and so thirsty his mouth ached. He had been gone from the rectory—from home—for hours; for days; he would never get back safely; they would tell Father that he had wandered off into the swamp, that he had run away, and Father would say, Then he is no son of mine any longer . . . .A cloud of mosquitoes surrounded Elisha, sucking blood from his face and throat, his exposed arms, if he did not energetically brush them away. To elude them he must run, run, yet he was exhausted and could not run, and so hungry, he found himself desperately plucking at berries . . . tiny white berries, shrivelled, and bitter to the taste . . . and then, by chance, to his delight, a curious plumlike fruit that grew from a gnarled tree resembling a wisteria . . . he bit into it hungrily . . . as delicious a fruit as he had ever tasted . . . though very curious: being the size of an apple, but heavy, and pulpy, and unusually juicy, of the color of dusky purple grapes, so richly dark as to seem black.

  Poor Elisha!—he could not stop himself from devouring the fruit in ravenous mouthfuls, the juice hot and stinging down his chin; until, with no warning, the back of his mouth burst into flame—and his throat closed up tight—and he choked, and gasped for air—gagging, and retching, and throwing himself frantically about, until—

  “’LISHA! THERE YOU are.”

  He was being nudged awake. Tenderly lifted. His tall fair brother Thurston had discovered him, saved him. Yet with no word of reproach or chiding, still less anger. Thurston, freely perspiring, short of breath, holding him in his strong arms, bringing him back to firm ground and safety.

  And Elisha grasped his brother tight around the neck, and wept in gratitude, exhaustion, belated terror. For Thurston was his elder brother who loved him, and would always love him. (If this poor wretched creature stinking of swamp muck, eyes swollen nearly shut from insect bites, skin abraded and bleeding, was in fact Elisha and not a changeling.) Elisha surrendered all pride and clung tightly to his brother as if he were a small child, lacking all strength, volition and self-definition. O Thurston!—one day I will do as much for you.

  5.

  And there is Millicent.

  Beautiful Millie, his sister.

  Of whom, these troubled days, Elisha cannot allow himself to think; nor remain in a room with for very long, especially if they happen to be alone together.

  “GAILY THROUGH LIFE I WANDER”

  Millicent Licht breaks hearts but it is not her fault, if hearts there are, in plenty, to be broken.

  And so many very silly people in the world!

  Her schoolgirl classmates have always adored her, at the Husebye School in Albany, at Miss Metcalf’s in Hartford, at the Lake Champlain Academy for Young Christian Ladies, they court her, shyly, aggressively, they compete for her fickle attention, leave little gifts for her in secret, for Millicent Licht is the prettiest of the lot, and Millicent Licht is by far the most clever (as even the schoolmistresses are forced to agree): and those who have been fortunate enough to meet Mr. Licht, and to exchange a few words with him—how impressed they are! (For, set beside their own fathers, is not Millicent’s father a paragon of manhood, indeed? And so very solicitous of them.) Some particularly privileged girls have even been shown photographs of Millicent’s elder brother Thurston, with the vague smiling hint . . . the merest whispered murmured soupçon of a hint . . . that one day, perhaps, they might meet. (One fifth-form girl, who had formed an especially passionate attachment to Millicent, declared, looking from Thurston’s photograph to Millicent, and back again: “Why, he is your equal in beauty!—you are Greek gods!” And Millicent, smiling but faintly, and showing none of the amused contempt she surely felt, said quietly: “Please!—it is all we have to do, being mortal.”)

  It has sometimes been whispered of Millicent Licht that she breaks hearts because she is cruel, and wanton, and selfish, and manipulative, and because she delights in hurting (did she not laugh when told that little Edie Saxon tried to drown herself one rainy March night, after being snubbed by her?—or that, just last year, at the Champlain school, both her roommates lied to save her from expulsion in a matter of suspected cheating on a French examination, and were themselves expelled and sent home in disgrace?); but the truth is simply that she forgets; forgets their existence from one hour to the next; as if it’s a matter of vague astonishment to her that creatures so silly and childish do exist from one hour to the next.

  “And they take themselves so seriously,” Millicent marveled to herself, “as if their little griefs and jealousies and heartbreaks are a matter of cosmic concern. As if I am to blame for their being ‘hurt’ over my inability to return their affections.”

  Indeed, how could blame be laid on Millicent Licht’s comely head, that in pressing unsought gifts upon her, certain of her classmates should be wounded to the heart that Millie might politely accept the gifts but decline the offer of friendship?—that they should mistake vague murmured promises for actual vows?—as if Millicent Licht had nothing more important to do than remember such childish transactions from one day to the next.

  So it seemed she often found herself uttering the identical words, like a Broadway ingenue in a popular, long-running play, with innocent widened eyes and an expression of startled compassion on her porcelain-doll’s face, “Why, whatever do you mean?—what on earth is wrong? Please don’t cry!” while trying not to laugh in angry ridicule that some silly girl should presume to shed tears in her presence, and attribute them to her. The most upsetting incident took place during Millie’s second year at Miss Metcalf’s when a thirteen-year-old girl in the form below hers, a granddaughter of Andrew Carnegie, tried to slash her wrist with a dull penknife when Millie inadvertently snubbed her at chapel. There was much fuss and flurry and scandal, the hysterical little Carnegie heiress was shuttled off home and Abraham Licht was summoned to the school to take Millie away with him—“As if I am to blame. And I am not, Father!—I am not.”

  “Of course you’re not to blame, darling,” Abraham said, kissing his vexed daughter on the forehead, “—but it might be politic, you know, to express some regret.”

  “‘Regret’?—for what?”

  “That this silly little girl imagined she should die over you, and take up arms against herself, in violation of all common sense. That, you know, she was hurt; and her life, and her family’s, is in a turmoil.”

  “But how is that my fault, Father? What had I to do with it? Everyone has been so unfair!” Millie cried, wiping at her eyes. “They look at me as if I’d given her the knife, myself. A ridiculous little dull penknife that wouldn’t cut butter. If I had—”

  “Now hush, darling,” Abraham said quickly, squeezing his daughter’s shoulder just hard enough to capture her attention, “you must not speak words that might be misunderstood, and misquoted.”

  But there was nothing to be done. Miss Metcalf herself, the venerable headmistress, would not hear of Millie’s staying on at the school. Nor did Abraham think it a very good idea under the circumstances, though Millie’s grades were quite good, and her relations with her instructors excellent. “At least, Father, they should refund you for the remainder of the school year,” Millie relented; and Abraham said, with a wink, “The remainder of the year?—my dear, Miss Metcalf has agreed to refund the entire amount, dating back to September; and, in addition, the trustees have agreed to pay me a generous little sum in ‘damages’—to compensate for the upset you and your family have endured.”

  Which made Millie laugh gaily, as if she’d been tickled.

  Which made Millie stand on tiptoe to kiss her handsome bewhiskered father on the cheek, and tug in a frenzy of delight at his arm.

  A tale to be recounted many times, in Muirkirk. A tale Millie loved to tell to ’Lisha in particular.

  PRECOCIOUS GIRL! AS, in childhood, she possessed certain startling qualities of adolescence, so in adolescence, well
beyond her sixteenth year, she retained certain charming qualities of childhood. As all well-bred ladies of the era were trained, but very few succeeded in doing.

  In her sweet bell-like slightly wavering soprano voice Millie sings, for Father’s admiration, that delicate air from The Bohemian Girl that is one of his favorites—

  “I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls

  with vassals and serfs at my side . . . ”

  and the rapid clipped patter, in compound meter, of “It Is Better to Laugh Than Be Sighing,” from the splendid Lucrezia Borgia; and La traviata’s “Gaily Through Life I Wander”; and, with the coquettish mannerisms of an accomplished performer, the irresistible “La donna è mobile” from Rigoletto. When Millie was seven years old, and recently bereft of her faithless mother, Abraham saw to it that she was diverted by Broadway musicals and spectacles, among them Rossini’s Cinderella at Booth’s Theatre; so for months and years afterward Millicent sings Cinderella’s arias and dreams of herself as a prima donna . . . making her debut in Booth’s Theatre with Father, ’Lisha and the rest of the family proudly looking on.

  Her praises, and her smiling face, lavishly displayed in all the papers.

  For six arduous months Millie takes singing lessons with an elderly Neapolitan who’d made his operatic debut in Il trovatore; she attempts piano lessons, harp lessons, ballet—with initial enthusiasm, and a modicum of talent, before losing heart. For it is so much work! So much damned, tedious work. Millie is certain that acting on the stage isn’t at all demanding, except for memorizing dialogue; but, for some reason neither she nor Father can comprehend, considering her excellent auditions, Millicent Licht is never chosen for any play. When, for reasons having to do with one of Abraham Licht’s projects, the “Santiago de Cuba Plantation,” she, Father and ’Lisha are living in New Orleans, Millie takes elocution lessons with the Parisian Madame LaTour of Bourbon Street; another time, when the family is living in Philadelphia, she takes lessons in watercolor- and silhouette-painting, lessons in “gracious deportment” and, so long as she has the use of a spirited Thoroughbred mare owned by a woman friend of Father’s, riding lessons given by a handsome young Brazilian instructor. She is fourteen years old and has quite forgotten her mother; she is fifteen years old, she is sixteen—by this time utilized by Father upon a number of occasions as a “daughter” of his—that is, a daughter of Mr. Anson, or Mr. Berry, or Mr. Frelicht, or Mr. St. Goar. Depending upon the venue, and the project. Despite her age, Millie can even play hostess for her father if required. She wears the loveliest silks, velvets and wools money can buy when, as Father quips, there is money to buy them; her hair is charmingly fashioned in braids, or sausage curls, or queenly plaits wound about her head, or is brushed smooth and glittering on her shoulders. She has kept nothing of her mother’s, for, acting in a fit of childish temper one day, she cut up most of her mother’s possessions (clothing, linen, correspondence, books) with a scissors; but she has a beautiful little ermine muff and matching hat, and a red mohair coat with a mink collar; she had a darling Persian kitten (named Cinderella), until it died suddenly; her brothers are not jealous of the fact that Father so clearly loves her best . . . excepting perhaps Harwood, who is jealous of everyone. (Though she has never told anyone, Millie is sometimes frightened of Harwood, for he seems so resolutely uncharmed by her. In his small close-set unblinking eyes her china-doll prettiness counts for very little; her ploys, her mannerisms, her habits of speech and gesture provoke in him, at the very most, a mirthless grin. When they were younger he frequently pinched her, shoved her, tugged at her braids, whispered disagreeable things in her ears . . . but no matter, no matter, for he does not count: the remainder of the world is there to adore Millicent Licht, and to be heartbroken by her.)

  In short, Millicent lacks for nothing; and wants nothing she does not have; only that (but this is mere girlhood fancy, not to be voiced to Father) Time come to a halt . . . and Millie remain the daughter she is, and Father continue to love her as he does, forever and ever, Amen.

  2.

  Yet now, with no warning, so suddenly, in Millie’s eighteenth year, with the triumph of “Mina Raumlicht” fresh in her memory and so applauded by the family, and other ingenious projects surely to follow—now the bliss of childhood seems to be coming to an end.

  For Thurston has fallen into the hands of their enemies, and has been sentenced to death. And Elisha, her ’Lisha, has begun to behave strangely.

  And Father now neglects her. He’s away most of January and February on business (for Bullock is appealing Thurston’s case before the New Jersey State Supreme Court, and more money is needed, more money is always needed, to do the job properly); and when Father is at home in Muirkirk he’s exhausted, melancholy and distracted, and only vaguely aware of his elder daughter.

  “Am I imagining it,” Millie frets, “—or is Father mourning Thurston already? That cannot be!”

  Certainly Millie isn’t imagining this: in the altered atmosphere of the household, Miss Mina Raumlicht, like her sisters Delphine St. Goar, Arlina Frelicht, etc., no longer has the power to make Abraham Licht smile and laugh in delight; no longer has the power to arouse in him that mysterious scintilla of energy that might take root, and smolder, and spark, and eventually flame forth in ideas—plans—plots—stratagems of The Game. Father’s brow is anxiously knit, his eyes brood, the poor man is thinking, almost palpably thinking, but his thoughts yield little evident pleasure. Where, in the past, the children were accustomed to Father brooding in this way, and at last snapping his fingers and shouting in delight, “Eureka! I have found it!” now they must grow accustomed to brooding without relief, without end.

  Of his plans for Thurston’s rescue, should the appeal fail, Father is disturbingly vague. He consoles Millie with the unconvincing promise that “when it’s all over” they will join up with Thurston in Canada, or Mexico, or Cuba . . . maybe Abraham Licht will shift his base of operations to this foreign site where he might enjoy complete anonymity, and begin his career afresh.

  “There is something so appealing, isn’t there?—so American—about beginning afresh,” Father says, in a curious, yearning voice. “What will be a necessity for Thurston might be a fine idea for us all.”

  Millie makes an effort to comfort her father, lashing out bitterly at their enemies who dared to find her brother, her innocent brother, guilty of a crime no Licht would lower himself to commit. If only the true murderer were found! Millie rages. If only the police would do their duty and arrest him! Yet even that wouldn’t erase the supreme insult, the insult against their family, Millie says breathlessly, of Thurston being found guilty as if he were guilty.

  Abraham listens to his daughter’s words, as her eyes flash damp in the firelight. And makes no reply, when she speaks of the true murderer.

  For Millie knows nothing of Harwood’s involvement. Like all of the household, excepting Father, she suspects nothing.

  “But you will save Thurston, Father, won’t you?—he will be saved?” Millie pleads, in a lowered voice so that the younger children won’t hear, and be frightened; and Abraham Licht is roused from his fireside reverie, saying gently, “Yes, Millie, of course. Thurston will be saved,” with a curious, almost imperceptible emphasis on the name, as if they’d been speaking, half-consciously, of someone else as well, unnamed.

  3.

  How many years ago, more than a decade, when Millie was a very small child, the baby of the family, and the church-dwelling at the edge of the marsh wasn’t nearly so habitable as it is now, she’d crept along a corridor wide-eyed, frightened, imagining she heard . . . adult voices raised in anger: Father whom she adored explaining (annoyed, amused) that there was nothing, absolutely nothing about which Morna should concern herself, for all business was his business, and not hers; and Mother whom she adored protesting in a voice like shattering glass, But I must know, Abraham! I demand to know, it is my life as well as yours . . . mine and my daughter’s.

  And Father replie
s sharply: I don’t discuss my business affairs with women.

  And Mother laughs suddenly, and says: Women! Am I women! I’d deceived myself that I was your wife!

  And now silence, silence, silence . . .

  And now great waves of silence . . .

  For Father does not reply. Father does not condescend to reply.

  And the shivering little girl crouched in the hallway, fingers thrust in her mouth, hears nothing further save the sound of a woman’s heartbroken sobbing.

  (MINE AND MY daughter’s: what extraordinary words!)

  (Is this pain daughter, this anguish daughter, this paralyzing suffocating fear daughter?)

  MOTHER INSISTS THAT Katrina and the boys address her as “Miss Hirshfield” (“For I am not Mrs., it seems—God has spared me that blessing”) and that little Millie address her not at all.

  For daughter is to be explained as shame; as error; as sin.

  For daughter does not exist.

  There have been too many upsets, Miss Hirshfield says, laughing sharply, too many evictions, too many middle-of-the-night decampings, too many escapes from creditors, policemen, outraged “investors”: and now Miss Hirshfield’s heart has turned to stone: has turned in fact toward God. “For surely He will not betray me, Katrina, will He?—being pure spirit, and ‘He’ only by custom.”