My Heart Laid Bare

by Joyce Carol Oates

  But no she will not consent. For the man is too old: in his early sixties. And it’s wrong of him, unprofessional, unethical, to speak in such a way to one of his patients. To touch, to kiss, to make his claim. To cause murmurous, excited talk among the other patients, a number of whom are in love with him . . . their envious eyes snatching after Rosamund. As a young girl she’d stealthily entered her parents’ bedrooms (which were joined by a common door, never in Rosamund’s memory open) and in their absence she’d dared to explore their lavish clothes closets, their numerous bureau drawers and even their bedclothes . . . now and then discovering an item that mystified and intrigued her like a rosary of exquisite carved ivory beads amid her mother’s lingerie, a small gold snuffbox engraved with a stranger’s initials in a pocket of one of her father’s coats, a dog-eared copy of Kate Chopin’s outlawed novel The Awakening amid the piles of mostly unread books on her mother’s bedside table. So too in Moses Liebknecht’s office which Rosamund boldly entered late one afternoon, finding it unlocked, and empty, she’d hurriedly examined desk drawers, shelves, a cabinet, searching for precisely what she didn’t know and coming away disappointed for the man had few possessions apparently, little to identify him save a supply of meticulously wrapped Cuban cigars and a small black notebook of codified inscriptions in pencil covering page after page; and, on the bookshelves behind his desk, the Collected Works of William James . . . Rosamund paged through two or three of these volumes, risking discovery by Liebknecht, her heart pounding buoyantly with the audacity of her behavior, yet deciding not to care, for a book is meant to be public property surely, to be shared even with the ill. Many pages were annotated, in pencil; in the margins were exclamation points, question marks, and stars; at the front of a volume titled The Will to Believe there was an inscription in ink Truth is the “cash-value” of an idea. Truth is a process that “happens to an idea.”

  Could this be so? Was this devastating cynicism, or simple American wisdom? Rosamund returned the volume to the shelf in exactly the place it had been, smiling. How much easier life, if one could believe so. Choosing beliefs for any weather, as one chooses hats, gloves, wraps, boots. As one chose’s one’s destiny, and did not wait to be chosen.

  HAVING HAD NO word from Arthur Grille in weeks, Rosamund begins writing him. Cascades of letters, repentant and chagrined. I am “cured” at last of my hateful maladies. I am ready to re-enter the world. She writes to her father and to other relatives, copying passages from one letter to another as if transcribing poetry. Will you ever forgive me? I am ashamed of my behavior these many years. I can’t explain now that I am well why I so clung to my sickness as if my sickness were myself.

  The letters are signed, sealed, carried by Rosamund to a mailbox at the end of the gravelled drive. She doesn’t trust any of the servants at the Clinic. (Yet can she trust the mailman?) Though she sends a dozen or more letters, she receives no replies; except an envelope addressed to MISS ROSAMUND GRILLE, sealed but with no stamp, which she opens quickly in the privacy of her room—

  Dearest Rosamund,

  You have only to consent. I am waiting.

  L.

  In early September, Rosamund insists upon speaking with Dr. Bies, though Dr. Liebknecht is her therapist. She takes a good deal of time with her toilette, fashioning her hair into a passably neat chignon, dabbing powder onto her pale face, selecting attractive clothing and jewelry. Wondering, with a stab of shame, how she’d ever been indifferent to her appearance.

  Telling the heavyset turtle-eyed physician that she wasn’t ill, she was well—exactly as she’d been promised. “And I want to be discharged from the Clinic as quickly as possible.”

  Dr. Bies smiles politely, as if he’s heard these words many times before. “Miss Grille, I’m afraid that isn’t possible. We are accountable solely to your guardian. You’ve been, you know, committed.”

  “A voluntary commitment,” Rosamund says, trying to remain calm. “Surely that makes a difference?”

  “Your father will be contacting us soon, I’m sure. Perhaps we can speak with him on the phone. Unless he’s still in Europe, traveling.”

  “But—how recently have you heard from him? I haven’t had a letter or a card in weeks.”

  “Naturally the Clinic issues monthly reports, quite detailed reports, on its patients,” Dr. Bies says, “and naturally it’s our hope and our expectation that guardians will respond, apart from merely meeting their financial obligations. But we rarely receive personal letters, if that’s your question. And never from gentlemen as busy as Arthur Grille.”

  “But what do you tell Father in your reports?”

  “Our reports, as you must know, Miss Grille, are confidential. But very thorough and responsible.”

  “May I see mine?”

  Dr. Bies lifts his hands in a gesture of helpless gallantry.

  “Impossible, Miss Grille! As you must know. For, as I’ve explained, our Clinic is accountable solely to your guardian.”

  “And if my guardian has abandoned me?” Rosamund asks, her voice rising. “If everyone in the outside world has abandoned me?”

  “Your guardian hasn’t abandoned you, Miss Grille. Please don’t worry. Mr. Grille’s financial accountant in Manhattan has never been late with a single payment, and raises no questions at all.”

  Rosamund sits quietly. A pulse beats at her temple. She tells herself of course she isn’t trapped in this place, if she wishes she can escape . . . can’t she? From time to time patients more disturbed than she, more desperate, more rebellious, have slipped away from their residences, disappeared into the woods . . . only to turn up again a day or two later, subdued, drowsy with medication . . . looking as if they’d never been away, nor had had a thought of being away. She says, matter-of-factly, as if they weren’t physician and patient but equals, “You see, Doctor—I am not ill, I am well. As you and Dr. Liebknecht have promised. It seemed to have happened suddenly, but I suppose it may have happened by degrees. I am well, and I was well all along. There was a kind of veil over my eyes, like spite. A wish to hurt the person closest to me—myself. But now I see the truth of my situation—the truth that has happened to me. For my Wish was turned against myself, and now—as you’ve promised—my Wish has made me well. And so I want to be discharged. I insist upon being discharged. You must write to my father, to inform him.”

  “I shall note it on your September report without fail, Miss Grille.”

  “No more quickly than that? If you could locate Father, you might telegraph him. Obviously he must be in touch with his financial advisors. His broker, his banker. His accountant. For, as I’ve explained, I’m well now; I don’t want to remain with sick people. My life is passing rapidly by!”

  There’s an ebony-handled penknife on Dr. Bies’s desk amid a scattering of envelopes and papers. The stiletto-like blade glitters invitingly. Dr. Bies’s languid turtle-eyes observe the knife, and the distance from it to Miss Rosamund Grille as she sits perhaps three feet away, beginning to rock in her seat; he’s a shrewd fellow, deceptive in his bulk. “I would not, my dear, if I were you,” he confides, lowering his voice as if another party might be listening, “—for then you would be put back into restraints, and suffer a relapse.”

  “But my life—”

  “Why yes, it’s true for all of mankind,” Dr. Bies says, with an air of finality, “—life rapidly passes by. ‘The fact of having been born is a bad augury for immortality’—as George Santayana, at one time a patient of mine, has said.”

  Rosamund says, rising unsteadily to her feet, “Dr. Liebknecht would agree that I’m well. Ask him. He might write to my father. And of course I’ll write. I have written.”

  “Yes.”

  Dr. Bies is standing, Buddha-like, behind his desk; he makes a nearly imperceptible signal to one of the burly male attendants who’s been standing a respectful distance behind Rosamund, waiting to escort her back across the quadrangle to her residence. From somewhere close by, a bell is ringing. It
’s time for the midday meal. An enormous meal, formally served in the dining room, which will last for well over an hour. Rosamund feels a sensation of nausea, repugnance. She has to resist the impulse to clutch at her head, loosen her hair. She has to resist the impulse to shove and scratch at the attendant who, gently but firmly, unmistakably firmly, has taken hold of her forearm to lead her away.

  “I am well, and I was well. All along! I’d deceived myself. It was my Wish—as you’ve said. But now—my Wish is to be well. And I am well. Please, Dr. Bies—”

  Earnestly, hands clasped at his midriff, Dr. Bies says, “It’s helpful of you to write letters, Miss Grille. As many as you like, and to whom you like. The Honorable Morgan Grille of the state supreme court in Albany is a relative of yours, I believe? His elder daughter was a patient of ours too, some years ago. Letter writing, like the keeping of a journal, is, for women, excellent therapy. It will keep your mind active, and fill up the hours. And, you know, Rosamund—we’ll be delighted to mail your letters for you. It’s no trouble at all.”

  BY NIGHT SHE tries to escape the Clinic’s vast grounds. In a hooded coat, in rubber-soled boots, a scarf tied tightly around her head she tramps the woods for hours, in panic, in delirium, It is my own Wish that confines me, it will be my own Wish that sets me free, in the end exhausted, lost, circling back toward the Clinic which rises like a ruin out of the darkness, like a nocturnal animal panting at the edge of the lawn seeing, in Dr. Liebknecht’s residence, a solitary lamp burning. She wonders if he, her lover, examines her letters too, or only Bies; or if her letters are read at all or merely disposed of.

  He sends her his thoughts. Kindly, yet persistent.

  You have only to give your consent, Rosamund. I pledge to love you forever.

  She has no choice but to think of the man as her lover. Though he’s nothing like her previous lovers.

  She discovers gifts from him: a silken cord tied in an elegant, complex knot, left on her pillow; a bouquet of violets in an ink bottle filled with water, on her windowsill; a volume of verse by Christina Rossetti titled Goblin Market, which Rosamund reads avidly, with delight and incomprehension; and an emerald ring in an antique silver setting, which, waking one afternoon in the languor of the hot-sulfur bath, she discovers on the third finger of her left hand. As if it had always been there. “But whose ring has this been?” Rosamund vexes herself, wondering. “A former Mrs. Liebknecht? A mother. A grandmother? A daughter?”

  For she’s young enough to be Liebknecht’s daughter of course.

  Almost, she has to inquire: Is she this man’s daughter?

  She walks in the woods, at the edge of the marshy pond. It’s autumn now, an exhilarating taste to the wind, though cold, making tears stream down her cheeks. Marsh grasses, cattails, Jerusalem artichokes grow in profusion, making a high keening melodic sound in the wind. Moses Liebknecht observes her from a short distance, vigilant to see that she comes to no harm. Tall and erect and courtly he stands, handsome for a man of his years; his clean-shaven face slightly flushed as if heated; eyes silvery-bright with alertness, expectation; his hair, graying, shading into white, brushed thick against the crown of his head. Rosamund calls to him, “I see you, Dr. Liebknecht. You aren’t hidden from me. I respect you and I honor you but I don’t love you. I don’t want to love any man.”

  Dr. Liebknecht doesn’t reply. When Rosamund looks up, squinting—there’s no one there.

  Yet in fact you do love me, Rosamund. Your Wish is for us to be one: man and wife: a destiny you dare not resist.

  She runs from him, she’s not a woman to succumb to fantasies, hallucinations. She’s an intelligent young woman! She’s of the new generation of young women who have come of age in the early years of the twentieth century, she’s attended college . . . until growing bored with books, lectures, routine . . . she isn’t her mother and she certainly isn’t her grandmother and yet . . . who is she, exactly? Venus Aphrodite guides us in such mysteries, and Venus Aphrodite is never to be comprehended. So Moses Liebknecht’s voice assures her. She protests, “But—my father will object.” He says, dryly, But “Father” will always object. It is the curse of being “Father.”

  5.

  . . . Which day is this so strangely warm in the sun, biting-cold in shade, a fierce autumn sky and sepia light suffusing the tall juniper pines through which she runs like a dream gliding in and out of consciousness; in stealth making her way to the marshy edge of the pond, and into the pond, cold numbing water to her knees, to her thighs, she’s wearing flannel trousers, rubber-soled boots, a suede jacket and no gloves, bareheaded, and now the water rises to the pit of her belly, how fresh how chill how clear the surface of the water after days of November rain washing away debris floating in the pond and now the water is to her waist . . . she’s stumbling, her feet sinking in the mud, I am not ill I am well, I am not ill I am well, she is determined to escape her lover, she is determined to escape love, unworthy of love, a mutilated woman like all women seeing beneath her a half-woman cut in two at the waist, reflected in the pond’s surface glaring as a black mirror, a woman with no face, a woman with no eyes, rippling and quivering reflected in the depths of the sky, and everywhere the blinding blaze of sunshine so powerful she must shut her eyes. It is my Wish that has made me ill, now it is my Wish that has made me well, and made me free.

  “AND THE LIGHT SHINETH IN DARKNESS”

  His head, his head!—jammed with broken glass, slivers of memory!—and his soul of which he’d been so absurdly proud in constant danger now of dribbling down his elegantly tailored pants leg, an old man’s shameful urine.

  From which she will save him.

  She, who’s young. A remarkable woman. His creation, you might say. As a god might fashion out of mud, sticks, pebbles, minerals a shapely figure and breathe life into it, and suddenly—It lives! And he’ll suffuse her with strength, where there’s been weakness. And he’ll impregnate her with children, where there’s been barrenness. Children to replace his lost children. Children to replace the children who’ve betrayed him. And the miracle will happen again.

  “For Nature is never exhausted,” Abraham Licht thinks. “It is only we who wear out—some of us. Through a failure of imagination.”

  BUT HE HASN’T worn out. Despite the bitter shocks, disappointments and trials of recent years.

  For only consider: he has boldly reentered The Game though on all sides of him, in these vertiginous 1920’s, other, younger men are embarked upon The Game in their various uncharted—unconscionable—ways. On all sides there are fortunes to be reaped, and destinies to be claimed. Suddenly there are so many more Americans . . . so many more competitors . . . yet also customers, clients, patients. A vast seething sea of hungry souls. Ever more waves of immigrants from Europe and Asia; ever more waves of babies, from out of the inexhaustible void; and, wonder of wonders, older men and women living longer—and demanding to live longer, and ever longer. Mortality isn’t a consumer product but health, beauty, longevity are.

  The ultimate consumer product which affluent Americans (of whom there are more and more, with each passing month) will clamor to buy.

  Like Abraham Licht himself who, a few years ago, unknown to even Katrina and Esther, traveled to Manhattan to the office of the renowned urologist Victor Lespinasse and arranged for a sensitive, and very costly operation; an operation that has resulted, Abraham Licht thinks, in a rejuvenation of body and spirit; for as Dr. Lespinasse says gravely, “A man is as old—or as young—as his glands.”

  It may even be, a man is his glands.

  He’s a follower of William James, America’s home-nurtured philosopher. He’d have liked to meet James up at Harvard, and shake the man’s hand. For to what purpose is it, he’s always wondered, to inquire after origins? “original sin”? out of what unfathomable pit of Medusa-serpents an idea, a sentiment, a passion, a belief arises? We ask only What are the results? Our gaze is resolute, Not backward but forward. Not thought but the fruits of action.
r />   And once more he’s succeeded in winning the love of a beautiful, desirable, mysterious woman; a woman who’s his intellectual equal, or nearly; a woman with no brothers or sisters, the heiress daughter of a Manhattan millionaire. Once more, drawn to Venus Aphrodite in the flesh of a mortal woman. “This time, unmistakably, a woman deserving of my love and devotion. A woman of the New Era, yet a woman, still; wounded as a woman is invariably wounded, and seeking her fulfillment in a man.” The nervous hooded eyes moistly green, the thin, sensual mouth in a fixed smile. No man can love me, I can love no man. Yet from the first he’d known they were fated for each other, he’s a man of romance, a man born to that terrible American decade the 1860’s, he believes in fate even as he believes that we make our own fate, and call it what we will.

  But no denying how his pulses, including the thick sinewy pulse in his groin, stirred, that morning in Bies’s office. Rosamund he prays, not entirely jesting O Rose of the World have mercy on an ardent lover in an aging man’s body.

  2.

  By autumn of 1926 it can be confirmed, as Abraham Licht confidently notes in his memoir, that he’s well again; fully recovered; though at times, admittedly, his head aches as if it’s filled with broken glass which the slightest movement can unsettle.