My Heart Laid Bare

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Calling out, in a startled voice: “Mina—?”

  And she who has been cavorting among the mirrors in the Gold Room, by no means drunk (for she has had only two or three glasses of champagne) yet not, perhaps, entirely sober (for it is so very tedious to remain sober), whirls about, not very gracefully, and sees—but whom is it she sees?

  A young man of about thirty, a stranger; yet alarming in the eagerness with which he bounds up to Matilde, and the boyish delight with which he addresses her.

  Yet in the next instant the young man is apologetic and deeply embarrassed, for of course this isn’t “Mina Raumlicht” whom he has so rudely accosted but “Matilde St. Goar”—who confusedly offers him her hand and in violation of proper etiquette dares to introduce herself.

  And the blushing young man introduces himself—“Warren Stirling, of Contracoeur. More recently of Richmond, Virginia, where I’ve joined an uncle’s law firm.”

  (Warren Stirling. Does the name strike a chord, evoke any response? You would not think from Matilde’s composed face that, yes it does.)

  “ . . . very sorry to have upset you, Miss St. Goar,” Warren Stirling is saying, still holding Matilde’s delicate gloved hand, and speaking passionately, “—but you so much resemble a girl I once . . . knew. ‘The Lass of Aviemore’ I called her—a romantic fancy of which she knew nothing just as, I should make clear, she knew nothing of me. You might be sisters, Miss St. Goar—you might almost be twins. Though years have passed . . . we are all a bit older now.”

  “And what was the name again?” Matilde asks carefully.

  Warren Stirling repeats the name. Reverently.

  Matilde says, “Mr. Stirling, I am sorry to disappoint.”

  FOLLOWING WHICH, THINGS happen swiftly.

  In three hours and forty-five minutes, to be exact.

  And in the course of several hastily arranged meetings for the following day, the next day and the next.

  For Warren Stirling’s devotion to the lost Mina Raumlicht is readily transferred to the living Matilde; and Matilde, dazed and shaken and forgetful of her hauteur, is irresistibly drawn to him. (“He loves me,” she thinks. “Isn’t that argument enough, that I am to love him? And Warren Stirling is good.“) In a burst of tears and candor at their third rendezvous, in a tearoom on Rittenhouse Square, she confesses to Warren Stirling that her name isn’t Matilde but Millicent, or Millie; “Matilde” being a caprice of her willful father’s following the death of her mother, whose name was Millicent, when Millie was twelve.

  “‘Millie’—a lovely name. ‘Millicent.’ It suits you perfectly,” Warren Stirling says, gazing upon her with tender eyes.

  “My father, you see, is a strange man,” Millie hears herself saying, “—a powerful and even cruel personality. For me to feel affection for any other man, any man not him, would be interpreted, I’m afraid, as a betrayal of him.”

  Warren says, squeezing Millie’s gloved hands, “Why, I wouldn’t wish you to betray your father, Millie, in becoming my—bride,” and Millie says, suffused with happiness, “Nor would I, Warren—but what must be, must be. ‘As above, so below.’”

  “THE BULL”: L’ENVOI

  Poor Anna Emery Shrikesdale: though she was only in her mid-seventies her bones had grown so light and brittle, her left thighbone snapped of its own while Roland was helping her to walk; and so ravaged was she by the subsequent pain, and so generally demoralized by the predicament of being yet again bedridden, the poor woman never recovered, but lay for hours in a delirium, during which time she wept, and raved, and prayed, and begged for Roland to remain close by her; and abruptly, in the early morning hours of 19 December 1916, passed into a comatose state—from which her physician said it was “highly unlikely” that she would recover.

  “Do all you can to save my mother,” Roland said, agitated. “Yet do not, you know, dare to exceed the boundaries of ‘natural law’—do not extend the poor woman’s suffering by a single minute!”

  For hours Roland maintained a strict vigilance by Mrs. Shrikesdale’s bedside, as all the household staff noted; stroking her limp hand, speaking to her in an encouraging, boyish voice, even for some heartrending minutes singing to her one or another lullaby which, long ago, she had sung to him. Then, growing restless, he called for newspapers—for a bite to eat, and several bottles of ale—and went so far as to light up a cigar in the very sickroom!—being distracted by his worry for Mrs. Shrikesdale, no doubt, and not entirely possessed of his usual good judgment. (However, Roland meekly put out the cigar when reprimanded by Mrs. Shrikesdale’s physician.)

  Following which, it was afterward estimated that, between the hour of midnight and one o’clock (of 20 December), Roland slipped away from his mother’s bedside, and from Castlewood Hall itself—never, to the astonishment and horror of all of Philadelphia, to return.

  IT WAS A discreetly kept secret at this time that Roland Shrikesdale III, while a loving and dutiful son to his mother, and a pious churchgoing Christian, and in society a gentleman famously ill at ease with women, had yet acquired since his return from the West a very different sort of repute in one or another of the Philadelphia sporting houses: being known, for example, not without affection, and some awe, as “The Bear” (owing to the prodigious quantity of hair growing on much of his body) at the Clover Street establishment of Mrs. Fairlie, and “The Bull” (owing to his prodigious sexual powers) at the Sansom Street establishment of Madame de Vionnet. Rather more as a gesture of good breeding than out of an actual intent to deceive, Roland customarily gave a false name at such places—“Christopher,” “Harmon,” “Adam,” etc.—and so accommodating was the atmosphere, so diplomatic the persons with whom he was likely to come into contact, only a very few members (all, of course, men) of Roland’s own set knew of his double identity.

  (For such is the expression—“double identity”—crude and sensational, indeed—to come into play, after that tragic event which newspapers throughout the East were to headline as Roland Shrikesdale’s Second Demise.)

  It was directly to Madame de Vionnet’s brownstone that Roland drove that night in his Peugeot; it was in the favored Blue Room on the second floor that the grieving young man spent several recuperative hours in the company, as was his custom, of two of Madame de Vionnet’s most attractive girls—who afterward testified to The Bull’s undimmed ardor and prowess. That poor Roland didn’t give a hint of the distress he obviously felt for his dying mother was in keeping, Madame de Vionnet said, with the rich young man’s good manners; for he wasn’t one of those tedious gentlemen of whom, alas, there are many, who insist upon bringing their troubles with them to the very place where such distractions are to be overcome.

  Following this interlude Roland said good-bye to the girls and to Madame de Vionnet, tipping her handsomely. He left the brownstone by a side door to make his way through the softly falling snow to his lemon-yellow Peugeot parked close by. Yet, about to unlock the automobile, suddenly, so suddenly he didn’t have time to think, he was accosted by two, or was it three men, of his approximate size and weight, who bore quickly upon him and whose faces he couldn’t see as they pinioned his arms to his sides and yanked his hat down over his eyes. “Mr. Shrikesdale,” said one, in a falsetto voice, “—we’ve been sent by Anna Emery to fetch you to her at once.” Roland, struggling, protested, “But—I’m fully capable of driving home myself—I’m on my way to her at this very moment.” A second man, drawing a brawny forearm beneath Roland’s chin so he was forced onto his toes, choking and sputtering, unable to breathe, said in a similarly high-pitched, jeering voice, “Mr. Shrikesdale!—we have been sent by your long-dead father to fetch you to him at once, with the greatest dispatch.”

  “ALBERT ST. GOAR, ESQUIRE”

  I s’t so?—to ‘bestride the narrow world like a Colossus’—!” speaks Abraham Licht softly to his mirrored reflection as at a quarter past five on the afternoon of 21 December he at last completes his exacting toilet. “Indeed yes: it’s so.”<
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  By way of a hand mirror he spends some minutes critically examining himself from all sides, and finds the vision gratifying—though certain gray-grizzled hairs and the creased forehead, in this light, show glaringly; and it’s as he feared, a slight excess of weight has had a deleterious effect upon the Roman line of his jaw. Yet as always formal attire, in this instance white tie and tails and a prominent French collar, enhances his natural aristocratic bearing and gives a spark, of sorts, to his spirits.

  A spark or a smoldering flame?—within the hour the bridegroom-to-be will have dropped by Eva Clement-Stoddard’s house to escort her out to Langhorne Hall; and all of Philadelphia will begin assembling there to celebrate the engagement of Mrs. Clement-Stoddard to Albert St. Goar, Esq.

  At which time Admiral Clement will announce the date of the nuptials: 30 March 1917.

  “Am I content?—very nearly. Am I fulfilled?—very nearly. Have I conquered all?—very nearly.”

  And I love the woman.

  The deep-set eyes, the winking secrets, the smile, it is a genuine smile, Abraham Licht’s smile, superimposed for a dizzying moment upon the smile of Albert St. Goar.

  And God saw that it was good.

  AND AT THIS moment the doorbell to the apartment sounds and St. Goar’s manservant hurries to answer it.

  SO EXCITED IS Abraham Licht at the prospect of the evening ahead—the apotheosis, or nearly, of all he has yearned for in his lifetime—he has decided to be lenient in the matter of his daughter’s strange behavior this past week. He attributes Millie’s frequent absences from the apartment and the flurried distraction of her manner to the fact of his imminent marriage. (For of course Abraham knows nothing of Warren Stirling, not even the young man’s name; nor of the couple’s plans rapidly taking shape for a wedding—or a secret elopement—of their own.) “Millie is jealous, Millie is frightened of the future—poor girl, I quite understand. As if I, her father, would abandon her. Never!” He’s decided, too, not to vex himself right now with anxiety over Darian . . . from whom he received just that morning a startling, impertinent letter.*

  “I shall deal with Darian in good time,” Abraham Licht thinks uneasily, “—and only hope the lad will have the tact not to spring his nasty surprise on poor Esther.”

  Of these distressing matters Abraham Licht doesn’t think, for it begins to seem to him that the glimmering earthly globe is but the size of an apple to be snatched up in hand, and devoured!—and the days, months and years of warfare leading to this consummation are as nothing—“Mere chaff in the wind.” Even if he wished, he couldn’t summon back that terrified child of six or seven who was discovered exhausted and starving one day along a country road near the great Muirkirk marsh; he couldn’t summon back the boy he was, the hungry young man he’d become, the lover, the father . . . .As for the many women in his life, upon whom so much of his passion has been centered, he refuses to recall them. They disappointed him: but Eva Clement-Stoddard will not.

  There’s the hope, too, that he and Eva will have a child together. A son?—but even a daughter would do! To replace those who’ve been faithless.

  SO JUBILANT IS he, so pleasantly enlivened by a glass of sherry he’s been sipping during his lengthy and exacting toilet, Abraham isn’t concerned at first over the mysterious, heavy packages which have been delivered by messenger to ALBERT ST. GOAR, ESQ.—wrapped in stiff silver paper with gilt ribbons and bows and numbering at least one dozen; of odd sizes—one appears to be a hat box, another is cylindrical, others are long and narrow like florists’ boxes, the rest are rectangular. If there’s an edge of mockery to the accompanying card,

  SALUTATIONS & CONGRATULATIONS HAIL & FAREWELL “ALBERT ST. GOAR, ESQ.”

  Abraham isn’t in a mood to take note. Instead it seems to him in the celebratory mood of the day that out of nowhere these handsomely wrapped presents should arrive, and that they should be sent anonymously.

  “Damn! I have so little time,” Abraham thinks, glancing at his gold pocket watch, one of Eva’s heirloom gifts. “But I can’t resist opening one or two of these now; maybe they contain something that will amuse my darling.”

  So, briskly, whistling a favorite aria from Don Giovanni, he unwraps one of the moderate-sized packages, noting its peculiar heaviness. Not clothing, clearly—an objet d’art?

  In fact it’s a tin stamped with the familiar heraldry of Fortnum’s Food Shop, London. (“That’s right: Albert St. Goar is formerly of London.”) The lid has been hammered securely down so he has some difficulty prying it loose; has to use a butter knife, for leverage; then, staring inside, astonished he sees—a hunk of raw meat? Leg of lamb? beef? covered in dark, kinky hairs? He feels a tinge of nausea. Why would meat from the butcher’s shop be delivered in so crude a manner—the inside of the tin reeking with fresh blood, and bone marrow, gristle and torn flesh hideously exposed?

  “How disgusting,” Abraham exclaims. “And in Philadelphia of all places.”

  With shaking hands, yet with that stoic fortitude that has characterized his entire life and career, a sense that we must proceed to the end even if the end be bitter, Abraham tears off the wrappings of another tin, and pries it open to discover—dear God!—a bloodless-white naked human foot with misshapen toes and nails ridged with grime, attached to the remains of an ankle.

  From this, grimly, teeth clenched, Abraham proceeds to a smaller tin containing several pounds of intestines heaped together in an unspeakable slippery mass.

  INDEED IT’S A pity as Abraham Licht would one day note in his memoir that, imagining himself a lucky man he’d been in truth luckless, a pawn of the gods, for had he begun the unwrapping with the hat-box package containing Harwood’s head I would have immediately comprehended the horror of the situation and would have been spared proceeding further.

  * Darian’s letter, astonishing from a son who’d seemed so long obedient and reasonable, was a harsh, unwarranted attack upon Abraham Licht as a “deceitful father.” Darian charged him with causing the death of his and Esther’s young mother Sophie and, following her death, seeking to erase her memory. Darian’s letter was scribbled in anguish, and obvious haste, covering four sheets of notebook paper and concluding:

  You cheated us of our Mother so I will cheat myself of all that is Father. I swear I will never see you again. I will never speak with you again. I will never be a son to you again SO LONG AS I LIVE.

  P.S. I have arranged to pay my own tuition for the term at Vanderpoel & will not be returning next year.

  Darian

  THREE

  There is no conclusion . . . There are no fortunes to be told and there is no advice to be given. Farewell.

  —WILLIAM JAMES, AT THE TIME OF HIS DEATH, 1910

  A BLOOD-ROSE!

  Whispers the dying woman in amazement, a woman no older than Esther, look! a blood-rose! . . . though she’s staring at the ceiling and unable to see the black blood spreading about her thighs in a soft sighing explosion, soaking into the mattress, O God help me, a blood-rose! . . . in a fever delirium, in a parched heat so powerful that Esther’s fingers burn touching her skin, trying to steady her, as the older nurse works to staunch the flow of blood: and the room’s four walls press suddenly close.

  So suddenly, Death. And Esther staring, numbed, unprepared as if the reversal of Life were a mistake of her own which, if she but knew what she’d done, she might rectify.

  AFTERWARD IT’S SAID of the dead woman (aged nineteen, mother of three young children): What did she expect, doing a thing like that? And if she had three children already, why not four? why not five? six?

  Had she lived, criminal charges would have been brought against her, but not against her husband, no longer living with his family.

  A BLOOD-ROSE, THINKS Esther, appalled, fascinated, pressing her forehead against the windowpane of the dormitory room, while the other student nurses chatter behind her; and Death hovers about her, a thin coating of panic, sweat sticking to her skin. Standing here, her back to the
crowded room, she can barely see—for it’s nearly dusk—the fine chill mist that rises in the valley each day at this time, blown in opaque little clouds, hurtful to breathe. On cold nights it freezes and the tall grasses in the field behind the hospital are covered unevenly in frost and in the morning Esther’s heart aches with thoughts of Muirkirk and home . . . for she has come a very great distance, it seems to her, and perhaps, as Katrina has warned, there will be danger in going back.

  Standing with her back to the lighted room, staring out at the gathering dark, at Death, Esther begins to see in the glass her hazy image, taking form. It is strong, it is defiant, it is her own.

  A BLOOD-ROSE, ESTHER whispers.

  A blood-rose, she writes in her letter to Darian, telling him of this, and of other spectacles now commonplace, now daily, spectacles past imagining if one were to fully imagine (though Darian might write the music to express them: only he!) but words fail her as if, with clumsy fingers, she were trying to hold a pen too small, whose point broke when pressed against paper. Now there is so much to say, so much! but she cannot speak! the words turn to tears in her throat and she cannot speak! trying to describe for her brother (so many hundreds of miles away he will never hear, he will never understand) the quality of her life as a nursing student, one of three hundred girls, at the nurses’ training school attached to the Port Oriskany General Hospital. But there is the restraint of paper, pen, ink, words. How very painfully they shape themselves, words, awkwardly held in the mouth, a tongue grown oversized. Esther would tell Darian about the young mother who hemorrhaged to death the previous day with no doctor in attendance but doesn’t the word hemorrhage make distant and clinical what was so real, Esther’s own first experience of Death, the astonishment of Death, that blood-rose blossoming so very suddenly in an ordinary room . . . .Esther would tell Darian of the strange angry strength that rushes through her in waves to leave her sick and numbed and exhausted . . . yet exulting. Esther Sophia Licht living away from Muirkirk for the first time in her life, enrolled at the Port Oriskany School of Nursing, in her starched white student’s cap, her nursing uniform and pinafore, her white stockings, white shoes.