My Heart Laid Bare

by Joyce Carol Oates

  At this halting recitation, made as Roland swayed on his feet, his head thrown back, his eyes shut, and his lips gleaming with spittle, not only Anna Emery Shrikesdale but a number of ladies were reduced to tears; and all the gentlemen close by were powerfully affected. An astonishing feat of memory, indeed, for anyone at all—let alone a man suffering from amnesia! It seemed that Roland’s unconscious mind was stimulated to such a degree by these chance associations, the memories came unbidden to his consciousness, and possessed an extraordinary potency. Evidently Roland could not initiate them, nor, once begun, could they be stopped; they must simply run their course; leaving the perspiring young man drained and exhausted, and his skin, already sallow, turned a sickly grayish-yellow hue.

  The Philadelphians who witnessed such heartrending trances could hardly doubt that Roland was Roland; and if, now and then, from decidedly queer sources, they heard whisperings that the Shrikesdale heir was not quite the man one supposed him to be . . . such idiotic rumors were irritably dismissed at once, as the speculations of the yellow press.

  “He is a remarkable case, is he not?” Dr. Thurman, the Shrikesdales’ physician, said proudly. “When he’s fully restored to his health I shall make a name for myself—and, of course, for Roland as well—by writing up his story. The medical world will scarcely believe it.”

  6.

  In the spring of 1915, when newspapers were filled with stories of the barbarous sinking of the British liner Lusitania by German submarine, and reports of President Wilson’s uncompromising response, there was delivered to Mr. Abraham Licht of Muirkirk a most curious telegram, indeed—

  ALBERT ST. GOAR ESQ. IS HEREBY INVITED TO A CHARITY FÊTE HE WILL NOT FAIL TO FIND AMUSING CASTLEWOOD HALL PHILADELPHIA SUNDAY MAY 15 2 PM TWO TICKETS RESERVED IN HIS NAME SHOULD HE WISH TO BRING A COMPANION (“COMPLICITY?”)

  Astonished, Abraham Licht read it several times over, rapidly; and showed it to old Katrina, who could make nothing of it; and even, later—though father and daughter happened not to be on the most cordial of terms at the moment—to Millie, who likewise read it several times, and turned a frightened face toward him. “But who knows of ‘St. Goar’ here at Muirkirk!” she whispered. “It must be a plot of some kind.”

  Abraham smiled suddenly, though not, precisely, at Millie; and said as if brooding aloud, “Yes, it is a plot of some kind—to whose advantage, we must discover.”

  So it happened that Abraham Licht drove himself and Millie down to Philadelphia, in his newly acquired Packard touring car (plum-colored, with creamy-white upholstered interior and gleaming chrome trim); and, on that splendidly sunny Sunday, joined a slow procession of carriages and new-model motorcars through the gates of Castlewood Hall, and up along the quarter-mile gravelled drive to the house. As Albert St. Goar and his daughter Matilde, he had acquired at the gate two tickets priced at $300 each—the proceeds of the afternoon’s fête to go to the United Hospitals Charity Association of Philadelphia.

  A double row of plane trees lining the drive . . . a gently sloping lawn, or meadow, of several acres . . . azalea, rhododendron, and lilac in gorgeous blossom . . . Castlewood Hall itself: a mansion of eclectic American design (eighteenth-century Gothic the predominant style) of pale gray stone, with an immense curving portico, and too many windows to be counted. Baring his teeth around his cigar, Abraham Licht exclaimed: “‘This is Heaven, nor can we wish to be out of it!’”—in so ingenuous a tone, it would have been impossible to judge whether he spoke sincerely, or in mockery. Beside him, her gloved hands clasped tightly in her lap, Millie stared at the house—the lawn—the handsomely dressed ladies and gentlemen strolling about—and said nothing at all. She had in fact been silent for much of the drive; it was her conviction that they should not have come.

  “I can think of only one person, Father, who might have sent us that telegram,” she had said, after much thought, “—and he does not wish us well.”

  “Of course there is only one person who might have sent the telegram,” Abraham Licht said irritably, “—and of course he does wish us well.”

  St. Goar’s automobile was taken from him at the front entrance of the house, and driven off by a liveried servant to be parked elsewhere; leaving father and daughter feeling suddenly exposed, and on their own. Still, as they strolled through the crowd, very few persons glanced their way; they knew no one, and, it seemed, no one knew them. “How long must we stay, Father?” Millie asked, looking suspiciously about. “I think it must be a hoax.” To his disappointment Abraham Licht, or, to be precise, Albert St. Goar (formerly of London, England: a gentleman “retired from business”) soon discovered that there were no beverages stronger than lemonade, iced tea, and cranberry juice to be had at the fête; and, like a fool, he’d left his silver flask behind, locked away in a compartment in his car.

  “We will stay, Matilde,” St. Goar said severely, “—until the scene is played out, and we know its significance.”

  They made their questing way through the crowd of chattering strangers on the flagstone terrace; they made their way, Matilde’s arm through St. Goar’s, into a garden of topiary shrubs, statues in stained white marble, and gently splashing fountains; they allowed themselves to drift into the nimbus of ladies and gentlemen gathered about one of the refreshment tables, beneath an immense red-and-white striped awning; they exchanged greetings, vague yet animated, animated yet vague, with people who drifted past. St. Goar was fashionably dressed in a dove-gray costume of lightweight wool, with an embroidered silk vest, and a flowing white silk shirt; he wore a straw hat not unlike the hats worn by the majority of the other gentlemen, and a white carnation in his buttonhole, and gray mohair spats; and looked, on the whole, quite handsome and assured. His beautiful daughter Matilde (who had attended schools in Switzerland and France, until the outbreak of the War) wore a spring frock of the sheerest cotton, arranged in many layers of robin’s-egg blue and pale cerise, with a cerise sash that showed her tiny waist to artful advantage; and a skirt designed to show a surprising amount of ankle, and the silky gleam of transparent stockings. Her blond hair, smartly bobbed, was, for modesty’s sake, perhaps, very nearly hidden by a hat with a wide scalloped brim, and a veil of dotted swiss.

  Yet something chill and haughty in the young woman’s expression discouraged gentlemen from approaching her; and, in any case, there were a number of extremely pretty young women at the fête, known, no doubt, to Society.

  “Strange that our host doesn’t come forward to identify himself,” Albert St. Goar said, surveying the crowd with a pleasant if abstract smile, “—for I have the sense that he watches us, perhaps with amusement.”

  “With no amusement,” Matilde said curtly, disengaging her arm from her father’s. “You forget—he is a creature without a sense of humor.”

  With this, Matilde drifted off; and St. Goar, following slowly behind her, found himself, within a few minutes, in a curious conversation with a small, bald, irritable gentleman of approximately his own age (although he, St. Goar, looked a full decade younger) on a subject not easily grasped: the political situation? the perfidy of the German-Americans? the price paid by the gentleman’s wife for her horoscope? (“You would agree, sir, that $25,000 is too steep a sum, would you not? What is your opinion, sir?”) It was St. Goar’s instinctive understanding that this mousey little man, this person of such evident inconsequence, must be in fact a very wealthy man; and an important contact, perhaps, for St. Goar; yet, though St. Goar fell in vehemently with his denunciation of astrology and astrologists, or was it the German-American spies in our midst, his heart wasn’t truly in the exchange, and his attention continued to be focused upon his daughter as, in a pose of insouciance, she strolled through the crowd of strangers, twirling her parasol on her shoulder. The filmy layers of her dress rode the breeze, lightly; her step was graceful; her manner, to the casual eye, intensely feminine—in the old-fashioned sense of the word. Yet, how strong her will; and how her father was growing to fear it—!
/>   It was then that St. Goar chanced to see a stocky young man in a Panama hat, pushing someone in a wheelchair, brush, by accident, close by Matilde; saw how Matilde glanced around, startled; and how, like a small rude child, she knew no better than to stare, and stare—and stare. Even as St. Goar made his way to her, he saw that she was swaying, as if about to faint; she pressed a gloved hand against her throat; and drew away from the young man who, with some clumsiness, yet gallantry, made an effort to take hold of her arm, and steady her. “Very odd, very very odd,” St. Goar thought angrily, “—it isn’t like a daughter of mine, to be so odd!”

  When he hurried to her, however, he saw, through a sudden vertiginous blur, the cause of her incredulity: for the husky young man in the Panama hat, who, smiling and blushing, was nervously introducing himself as Roland Shrikesdale, and the woman in the wheelchair as his mother, Anna Emery Shrikesdale (“your hostess, you know, for this afternoon”) was no one other than . . . Harwood.

  . . . who was also, evidently, unless Abraham Licht had suddenly lost his senses, the son of the squinting old woman in the wheelchair; even as the old woman must be Elias Shrikesdale’s widow, and the proprietress of Castlewood Hall.

  Precisely how the remarkable scene was managed, and whether, as St. Goar, he acquitted himself respectably, Abraham Licht could not afterward remember: for his brain was adazzle.

  Harwood!—his Harwood!

  After so many years!

  Yet he was Harwood no longer: and darted quick warning glances at St. Goar and his daughter, not to stare too raptly.

  As to who he was . . .

  Plump, nervous, his skin sallow, a queer strip of scar tissue running down the left side of his face; his thick hair brushed flat, and severely parted; his mouth smaller, pinker, more moist than it had been of old. Not quite manly, perhaps; boyish, shy, sweet; inclined in certain situations to stammer; yet clearly intelligent and well-spoken; and unfailingly gallant to his mother—leaning now over Mrs. Shrikesdale’s wheelchair, and holding her lace-gloved hand in his as if to steady its tremor. (One could see at a glance that they were mother and son: their squinting smiles were identical.)

  Herewith, some minutes of bright brisk nervous social chatter, on Roland’s part primarily, as he explained to his guests the tradition behind the May fête (held each year in Philadelphia, and held every six years or so at Castlewood, depending upon his mother’s health); and to Mrs. Shrikesdale that he had met Albert St. Goar and Matilde some years ago, in London . . . when Matilde had been a schoolgirl . . . and Albert had been involved in antiquarian books . . . and they had enjoyed one another’s company enormously; but had, unfortunately, lost contact over the years.

  “It was naughty of you, Roland, not to bring them to meet me, then,” Mrs. Shrikesdale said, in a faint, breathless, yet coquettish voice, fixing her watery gaze upon Albert St. Goar; and Roland, his cheeks lightly flushed, murmured in her ear, in some embarrassment, “But Mother, I’m afraid, you know, I did—one beastly rainy afternoon—to our suite at Claridge’s. You enjoyed our little tea with them so much at the time—and now, dear, you seem to have forgotten it entirely!”

  St. Goar and his daughter now recalled the visit with evident pleasure, despite its having been some years ago; which threw poor Mrs. Shrikesdale clearly into the wrong. She begged their forgiveness; called herself a silly old feather-brained fool; and, extending her trembling hands to them both, she insisted they come soon—very soon—to dine with her and Roland at Castlewood.

  “Why, we shall be happy to do so, Mrs. Shrikesdale—we shall be delighted,” Albert St. Goar said in a voice of quiet elation.

  7.

  Following this lucky meeting, it transpired naturally that St. Goar and his daughter frequently visited Castlewood; were introduced by the kindly Mrs. Shrikesdale and her son to a number of extremely interesting Philadelphians; and even made the decision by midsummer to move from their home in upstate New York to an apartment on fashionable Rittenhouse Square, which Roland helped them acquire. Mrs. Shrikesdale was thoroughly charmed by St. Goar, who knew, it seemed, all about music, and history, and poetry, and painting—almost as much, indeed, as Joseph Duveen himself. (“He is so cultured a gentleman!—he may even be a genius, to hear him talk! Might not he and Eva Stoddard make an ideal pair?” Mrs. Shrikesdale asked, suddenly, one evening, in schoolgirl excitement; and Roland said lightly, “I had already thought of that weeks ago, dear.”)

  As to Matilde St. Goar—why, being so blessed with beauty, was the young woman so singularly melancholy; and, when not melancholy, so disagreeably bright, and brittle, and arch—her very laughter like shattered glass?

  Roland confessed that he didn’t know, as he’d never been on intimate terms with either St. Goar or Matilde; but word was, poor Matilde had suffered a broken heart, about which she would never speak out of pride.

  AS TO ROLAND Shrikesdale himself—despite the efforts of any number of parties, he rarely showed any interest in the opposite sex, at the various social events to which he escorted his mother; nor was he, for the remainder of his life, ever to regain his full memory. Yet, by degrees, his health returned—in fact, as Dr. Thurman remarked with some perplexity, Roland’s health more than returned!—for the new Roland, having survived his ordeal in the desert, was becoming far more fit than the old.

  Also, to the delighted surprise of people who’d known him since boyhood, and had known something of his father’s wishes for him, Roland began to show a tentative interest in horses, both in breeding and in racing; as, of course, Elias had done through his life. And, in his shy way, he began to express an interest in traveling abroad, or even back West—though hastily promising his mother that he would never, never go without her, this time. “When you’re feeling more yourself, dear, we shall go by rail to the Rockies,” Roland said cheerfully. “For they are one of God’s great spectacles, and must not be missed.”

  To Bagot Roland also expressed some childlike curiosity, for the first time, about the Shrikesdale fortune; and some distress, that, within the next few years, as a thoughtless relative had happened to mention, Roland would be obliged to sue for power of attorney over his mother’s estate. “It’s true that Mother is failing week by week,” Roland said in a quavering voice, his eyes aswim in tears, “—but I cannot believe that there will be a time when she is not fully herself; I cannot believe it. And, do you know, I have but the dimmest notion of what is meant by ‘power of attorney,’ Mr. Bagot—will you explain it to me?”

  THESE VARIOUS DEVELOPMENTS, along with the sudden arrival in Philadelphia of the mysterious gentleman “Albert St. Goar,” didn’t go unnoticed by Stafford Shrikesdale and his sons. Yet the four quarreled bitterly as to what steps to take with the fraudulent heir; and whether, even after so many months, he might not be Roland after all—their cousin, as Lyle stubbornly argued, though transformed.

  (“Identity is not that ambiguous,” Bertram said. “A man is either the man he was born—or he is not.” “But if we make a mistake?” Lyle said. “And if the mistake is fatal?”)

  Having been present at one of Roland’s feats of memory, Stafford Shrikesdale claimed in disgust that the entire performance was fabricated; very well done, to be sure, the way a professional actor might do it—but fabricated nonetheless. Willard, however, was present on another occasion, when, in a state of trance, perspiration streaming down his face and his eyes rolled whitely upward, Roland recited a good deal of the Book of Proverbs; and Willard confessed to being powerfully moved . . . and almost persuaded, for a few hours, that Roland was Roland. Then again, Bertram’s arguments for fraud were extremely convincing; and Aunt Anna Emery was easily duped; and, from time to time, even Lyle grew doubtful of his position, and spoke gravely of the seriousness of the crime if Roland turned out not to be Roland . . . “For might this not mean,” he asked, “that the real Roland, our cousin, has been murdered?”

  St. Goar, they believed, was a clue to the puzzle, since no one seemed to know anything abou
t him, except Roland. So they hired a private investigator, Mr. Gaston Bullock Means, of the William J. Burns National Detective Agency (which frequently did classified work for the Justice Department in Washington); but Means, after an exhaustive ten months’ investigation, claimed that he could find no information about St. Goar at all—not even a birth record, or a history of employment.

  “If ever a man does not exist,” Means reported, “—it is ‘Albert St. Goar.’”

  THE SHRIKESDALES OBSERVED that Roland remained Roland when he was in company; but that, at other times, he was beginning to grow negligent.

  For instance, he was glimpsed drinking now and then.

  For instance, he was glimpsed smoking—both cigarettes and cigars.

  For instance, he, or someone closely resembling him, was rumored to have visited a South Philadelphia bordello upon several occasions; and to have identified himself to the madam as “Christopher.”

  For instance, in Newport, in August, aboard the family yacht Albatross, Roland fell by accident over the side into fifteen feet of water; yet, to the amazement of all, he swam easily and confidently to safety, before he could be rescued—Roland, who had never before swum a single stroke in his entire life, and had been, since boyhood, terrified of water! (“Where did you learn to swim so beautifully?” his relatives asked him; and Roland said, somewhat evasively, “I think it must have been out West—I really don’t remember.”)

  That same month, in Newport, having inveigled the unsuspecting Roland into walking with them along the beach, his cousins reminded him of how very much, as a boy, he had enjoyed wrestling with them in the sand . . . wrestling with Bertram most of all . . . surely he remembered? “I’m afraid I don’t remember anything of the kind,” Roland said carefully, edging away. “But you must remember, cousin,” Bertram said, following him, “—you were the one who always wanted to play!” Lyle and Willard laughed as Bertram pretended to stalk Roland. It was a sunny windy day, an afternoon of boyish high spirits and levity; a sumptuous two-hour luncheon behind, and a yet more sumptuous four-hour dinner scheduled for the evening. “Now you know you did, you know,” Bertram said in a high-pitched child’s voice, feinting in Roland’s direction, “—you know you were the one! Always springing on us from behind, and grabbing us in a wrestling hold, and rolling and tumbling about in the dirt, in the sand, in the briars—why, little Roland was quite a terror, in his youth.” “This I find difficult to believe,” Roland said nervously. He was panting; agitated; so very warm, he removed his Panama hat for a moment, to wipe his damp brow. “‘This I find difficult to believe!’—what a fussy old nanny we’ve become, afraid to get our linen soiled!” Bertram said, baring his teeth in a grin. As Willard and Lyle looked on, amused, smoking their cigars, Bertram sprang at Roland; seized him crudely about the head and shoulders, in a “hammer” lock; yet, within seconds, before anyone quite realized what happened, Bertram was himself thrown down flat on the sand—with such violence, the breath was knocked out of him, and, for several minutes, he lay as one dead.