My Heart Laid Bare

by Joyce Carol Oates

  And Father urges, “Yes. Indeed.”

  And Father urges, “Indeed, Millie. Stay as long as the Fitzmaurices will have you.”

  And Father promises to come visit the Rhinebeck estate—“To see, you know, what’s there to be seen. And to be done.”

  For it’s no secret that the Lichts are, this autumn, down on their luck—though Abraham Licht scorns to believe in luck. And since the debacle of the Emanuel Auguste project, hors de combat as well—though Abraham Licht has never been out of combat for long, even when wanted by federal agents. But there’s no denying that they are poor again, their fortune vanished into the vaults of Wall Street as if it had never been. (“Perhaps that is the essence of money,” Abraham has mused, “—that it isn’t ‘real’; no more ‘real’ in possession than in dispossession. Like the vaporous human soul.”) And now the fortune must be replenished; and Mina Raumlicht or Lizzie St. Goar or one of their pretty sisters hopes she will be allowed to help replenish it.

  “Only instruct me, Father,” Millie pleads, lifting her lovely heart-shaped face to his, “—and I will do it.”

  ELISHA HAS BECOME unreasonable: he doesn’t want Millie to go to Rhinebeck because Millie is his.

  (And because, though he doesn’t tell Millie this, he’s smarting still from the waves of . . . physical revulsion? . . . moral repugnance? . . . that washed over him from that crowd of . . . white faces in the Philadelphia armory.)

  “But, ’Lisha, why do you care so much?” Millicent asks, startled by her lover’s mood, “—what have such people to do with us?” She’s genuinely baffled; Elisha knows she’s correct; yearns to believe she’s correct; yet finds himself reacting emotionally, turning roughly away despite Millie’s stealthy little kiss on the side of his neck. Now that they’re lovers, now since returning to Muirkirk and the enforced intimacy of family life in this remote rural place, at the edge of a marsh, in a region of steep hills, dreamy mountains and stark rushing wailing winds—now, it seems, their feeling for each other is mercurial and unpredictable as flame. Now edging in one direction, now in another. Dangerous. Treacherous.

  “’Lisha, darling—don’t you love me?”

  “Millie, the question is, don’t you love me?”

  “But why is it more urgent that I love you, than that you love me?”

  “Because I can trust myself, Millie, but not you.”

  “Yet can I trust you?”

  “If you loved me, Millie, yes.”

  “But if you loved me—?”

  Elisha begins to shout suddenly, “What value am I, loving you, if I’m not made worthy by your loving me; if I’m deceived, like every other ‘admirer’ of yours, by you!” And moves to exit, with the indignant aplomb of, say, the long-lost heir of E. Auguste Napoléon Bonaparte.

  Millie cries after him, “As if everyone isn’t deceived by you, including, I see now, me. I never did love you!”

  Elisha leans back into the room, uttering a percussive exit-line, “Then you were never deceived, girl! Were you!”

  “YET ARE WE really poor?”—Elisha ponders.

  Even as Father’s bookkeeper, Elisha isn’t entirely informed of Abraham Licht’s various bank accounts. And the contents of his safe here in Muirkirk. And the $12,403 in the burlap sack turned out to be almost $20,000 when carefully counted.

  And the elegant Willys-Overland automobile with the green plush cushions and spoked wheels and brass fixtures and white kidskin convertible top: does that appear to be the purchase (made in haste in the Lichts’ flight from Manhattan) of a desperately impoverished man?

  And there are, Elisha stubbornly believes, “treasures” in the old church. Antiques that might be sold, heirloom jewelry and objets d’art that could fetch high prices in a Manhattan auction house, surely. And Elisha has reason to believe that Father is in communication with Harwood at long last, and that there may be a gold-mining project about which he and Millie know nothing.

  So Elisha confides in Millie, once they’ve made up their quarrel. (How many times since returning to Muirkirk have they quarreled, and made up; made up, and quarreled!—sometimes having forgotten, in the midst of a quick, stolen kiss, whether they’re officially angry at each other.) So Elisha casts doubt upon Abraham Licht’s proposal for Millie to go to Rhinebeck; if they aren’t truly poor, if Father is exaggerating their plight as he often does. “But, ’Lisha, if Father wants me to go,” Millie says, sighing, “I don’t see that I have much choice.” And Elisha says, kissing her forehead, “We must stand up to him. For I don’t wish you to go, because I love you and because you are mine.”

  The implication being clearly Mine, and not his.

  At once Millie says, “Then—you must tell Father about us.”

  “Yes,” says Elisha at once. “Yes. I will.”

  “Tonight.”

  “Yes. Tonight.”

  “ . . . No later than tomorrow,” says Millie. “Because he is going away tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow is too late,” says Elisha.

  “But tonight is too soon.”

  “Tonight is too soon,” says Elisha, his voice rising in despair, “—but tomorrow is too late.”

  So they quarrel, they are quarreling again, Esther will hear them, Katrina has already heard them, what if Father hears them?—they must run away into the woods to hide, to kiss, to embrace, to weep together, because they are wretched with love, and ecstatic with love, and Millie accuses Elisha of not truly loving her because he is afraid of Father; and Elisha accuses Millie of not truly loving him because she is afraid of Father. And it is a certainty that by now Katrina knows.

  “But will Katrina tell?” Elisha asks in a frightened whisper.

  “Katrina will never tell—never!” Millie says. “She would not dare.”

  Are they quarreling, or are they kissing, hand in hand they’re laughing breathlessly when Esther steals up behind them, sweet lonely Esther who adores them, Esther who exasperates them, Esther who’s so easily wounded—for why do Millie and ’Lisha draw stiffly apart when she joins them, with the childlike need to press into their embrace, and be kissed, too! And afterward Millie pleads with Elisha to tell Father soon. “If not tonight, tomorrow. If not tomorrow, the day after tomorrow.”

  Says Elisha in a brave, defiant voice, “Yes! I will.”

  MILLIE IS SO lovely, and Millie is his, yet there’s terror in his happiness, for he cannot trust her, he cannot trust himself with her, this beautiful sister of his, a sister of the soul if not of blood, Millie with her fair, smooth skin, camellia-skin, so pale, so unlike his own, and her hair so fair and wavy worn in a soft roll, elegantly parted in the center of her head; her small ears covered with a look of girlish modesty; one might say chastity; and a cluster of “kiss-curls” at the nape of her neck. No longer enrolled in Miss Thayer’s, Millie need not endure the spinster-teachers’ sharp eyes, need not truss herself up in a corset for it is 1913 and not, as she says, 1813, and she will dress, she says, as she pleases. Her pretty skirts fall barely to the ankle in the latest style, her shoes are saucily open, often she neglects to tie on a hat, or to adjust her diaphanous veil, except when the sun is very hot and very direct. (For Millie isn’t so foolish as to risk her precious complexion for the sake of a rebellious whim.) Millie is so lovely that, thrown together here in Muirkirk in a way they weren’t thrown together in Manhattan, Elisha finds himself thinking of her constantly; his head rings with thoughts of her, of her and of him; and are they sinful (but Father has taught there is no sin) and are they wrong (but Father has taught it’s only mere human prejudice that yields wrong and right) and have they made a terrible mistake, surrendering their virginity to each other like man and wife (but what an unspeakably sweet mistake!); and will Father be angry?

  And will Father punish?

  It was after returning to Muirkirk that they became lovers—by accident, thinks Millie tenderly; by design, Elisha knows. (For only Millie’s love can combat that armory of faces, staring white faces, loathsome white fa
ces, nothing but Millie’s kisses, and Millie’s slender warm body, and Millie’s short fierce sobbing cries, in which, even now, Elisha does not dare believe.) “But I want you to be my husband!” Millie said, reckless, laughing, when he hesitated, “—I want to be your wife!—then there will be no going back.” He understood that she was in terror of her life as he was in terror of his, yet now there was no going back, they were wed to each other forever, no matter how the armory of strangers gaped and stared in revulsion.

  Afterward Millie wiped her eyes on the rumpled sleeve of her yellow-checked frock; secured the swelling roll of her hair with a tortoiseshell comb; and said, in a small sober voice, not quite meeting her lover’s eye, “Now you must tell him, Elisha, and he will be happy for us.” And Elisha, staring at her, said slowly, “I don’t think that is possible . . . but I will tell him.”

  TONIGHT?

  Not tonight.

  Tomorrow, then.

  . . . The day after tomorrow, in the evening. When he comes home.

  3.

  In retreat, in Muirkirk, the place of his birth; the solace of the marsh (in which one day he will drown himself!—perhaps); the angry comfort of long uninterrupted days and nights; the gratification of Shame. But it is a convalescence. He has had many such.

  For, “‘What wound did ever heal but by degrees?’” is Abraham Licht’s defiant query. And: “We are not fools, after all, ‘by heavenly compulsion.’”

  Thus, he ministers unto himself.

  It is a convalescence. There have been many such. The years, the seasons, the balm of quiet, the solitude of the churchyard, the swamp, the locked and shuttered room at the rear of the rectory: with no one as a witness (whether jeering or admiring) Shame will eventually yield to forgetfulness; forgetfulness, to Honor.

  For Honor is the subject of Abraham Licht’s story.

  FIFTY-THREE YEARS OLD! So quickly!

  A life more than half run!

  And it cannot be said, can it? that the years have been generous to Abraham Licht; that, despite his love, devotion, industry, and selflessness, he has been provided with a family worthy of his sacrifice.

  He requires more children, another son at least, another son very soon, for his children have not entirely pleased him.

  Of course there is Millicent, who pleases him enormously, and who is bound, he knows, to serve herself by serving him; of her absolute fidelity he has no doubt. And there is the incomparable Elisha, the ever-astonishing Elisha, whom Abraham Licht, were he not his stepfather and mentor, might almost envy! . . . a wily young genius, as adept at masquerade and cunning as Abraham Licht himself . . . though a creature of Abraham’s, of no worth without his guidance. (And one day, when the time is ripe, ’Lisha’s “color” will greatly advance his career; along precisely what lines, Abraham hasn’t yet decided.)

  Apart from Millicent and Elisha, however, Fortune has treated Abraham Licht perversely.

  For, consider: not one, not two, but three women captivated his heart, and, in time, trampled upon it. No matter the ardor, the depth, the eloquence of his devotion. (For, as time passes, Abraham has come to believe that Sophie’s illness and her final, deranged behavior was a repudiation of his love, as of all earthly love. For which, in my heart, how can I forgive her?)

  As for Thurston, his firstborn—he doesn’t wish to think of Thurston.

  As for Harwood—he doesn’t wish to think of Harwood.

  (Yet, only a few days ago, there arrived in Muirkirk, addressed to him, a curious letter postmarked Ouray, Colorado; a single stiff sheet of stationery from the Hotel Ouray; and these lines in Harwood’s childlike, labored hand:

  Ive given thought to my Life Father & am not so angry now with my Brother as I had been. I am not so lonely now. I will be writing again soon Father to seek your advice. I know your angry with me & blame me but I am not to be blamed, it was not my fault but Thurstons. I will not return East I swear til my Fortune is made & you will see what a Son I am to you. Or til you bid me come to you Father.

  Yr Son Harwood

  This letter Abraham hasn’t answered, uncertain of the spirit in which it was penned: sober, or drunk; sincere, or mocking; promising well, or ill. For once a man has spilled human blood he may have a taste for it.)

  Of the younger children, beloved by him, Abraham Licht rarely thinks. For he finds them merely children, who will never mature as the others have matured, lacking a gift for The Game.

  Darian may indeed by a musical genius as Woodcock and a few others insist but his talent, in Abraham’s unsentimental judgment, is too wayward and capricious to be guided. And Esther, poor dear child—Abraham finds it difficult to listen to the girl’s cheerful prattle and to follow with interest her schoolgirl news, her enthusiasm for nursing, or doctoring, “making hurt things well again” as she says. Alone of the family it’s plain, good-hearted Esther who seems to have made friends in Muirkirk, quite as normal, ordinary children do; according to Katrina, as bemused as Abraham himself, Esther actually likes her classmates and their families and is, in turn, liked by them; an unmistakable sign of mediocrity. (Compare this dull child with Millicent at that age, Abraham thinks. Already, aged eleven, Millicent was a practiced coquette, by instinct arousing affection in others without feeling so much as a moment’s affection in return. “But then the sensual yet morbidly pious ‘Miss Hirshfield’ was Millie’s mother, a volatile combination,” Abraham thinks, “ideal for the stage, if not for life.”)

  So he muses, broods; through many a long day; too restless to stay in one room, or even inside; hoping to stave off melancholy until it’s safely dusk and he can sip bourbon without qualms. How is it possible—he’s fifty-three years old, and so quickly?

  And my glorious career scarcely begun.

  4.

  “You ‘love’ each other—and you intend to ‘marry,’” Abraham Licht says quietly, looking from Elisha to Millicent, and from Millicent to Elisha, whose gaze shimmers with audacity and guilt. “I’m not certain that I’ve heard correctly or that I full comprehend the words I have heard. ‘Love’—‘marry’—what precisely can you mean? Elisha?”

  Elisha says quickly, “Millie and I love each other, Father. We are in love. We have been in love for a very long—”

  “—for too long without daring to speak,” Millie says.

  “—and we want, we must—be married,” Elisha says. His voice has begun to quiver. “As people do. As men and women do who love each other.”

  “Yes, it’s all very much as people do,” Millie says in a bright hopeful voice, “—people who love each other in a—normal manner. There is nothing unusual about it.”

  “There is nothing unusual about it.”

  Abraham Licht’s declaration hovers in the air, the most ironic of questions.

  “There is nothing unusual about it!” Elisha says with a nervous laugh.

  “If we are in love, and we are in love,” Millie says breathlessly, her slender arm tight through Elisha’s, holding him fast even as she leans against him, “—and have been so for a very long time, in secret.”

  “And why ‘in secret’?” Abraham inquires.

  Again looking from one of the timorous young people to the other with an air of detachment and equanimity. Not taking note of the extreme physical attractiveness of this young man and woman, of their fresh, open faces and striking features, but noting instead, with a clinician’s eye, how Elisha’s lower lip quivers and Millie’s normally placid eyes are unnaturally dilated.

  “But why ‘in secret’—why the need for secrecy?”

  Neither answers; until with an impatient expulsion of breath Millie confesses, “Because we worried, Father, that you wouldn’t understand; that you’d be unhappy, or object, or—”

  “My dear, why would I ‘object’?”

  “Because—” Elisha begins.

  “—you would not understand,” Millie cries.

  “Yet what is there, Millie, and Elisha, to understand?” Abraham asks, lifting his hand
s in a bemused appeal. “You come to me at this odd hour of the night with a whim of yours that might better wait for the clarity and sanity of morning; you stand there like very amateur actors at an ill-advised audition, yet expect seriousness of me, informing me you’re ‘in love’ and want to ‘marry’—‘as people do’—when the crux of the issue is, you can’t be in love, and you can’t marry, because you are my children; because you’re brother and sister; and, in any case, you can’t be ‘as other people’ because you are Lichts, and Lichts are not ‘other people.’”

  Elisha begins to protest but Millie, alarmed, hushes him, saying, “Father, we’re not brother and sister—surely we’re not. ’Lisha is a foundling, an orphan as you’ve always told us; he is not my brother.”

  Revealing none of the mounting rage he feels, Abraham says carefully, “Elisha is your brother, Millicent . . . and you are his sister. It is not possible for brothers and sisters to love each other in the way you claim to love; still less is it possible for them to marry. That is all I have to say.”

  “But he is not my brother!” Millie cries in exasperation. “Any stranger who glanced at us could tell in an instant!”