Give Me Your Heart

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Poor Evie! Her hit-and-run "accidental" death, a mysterious vehicle swerving on a rain-lashed pavement, no witnesses ... I would have helped you mourn, Dr. K——, and been a loving stepmother to your children, but by then you'd banished me from your life.

  Or so you believed.

  (For the record: I am not hinting that I had anything to do with the death of the first Mrs. K-. Don't bother to read and reread these lines to determine if there's something "between" them. There isn't.)

  And then, Dr. K———, a widower with two children, you went away, to Germany. A sabbatical year that stretched into two. I was left to mourn in your place. (Not luckless Evie, but you.) Your wife's death was spoken of as a "tragedy" in certain circles, but I preferred to think of it as purely an accident: a conjunction of time, place, opportunity. What is accident but a precision of timing?

  Dr. K———, I would not accuse you of blatant hypocrisy (would I?), still less of deceit, but I can't comprehend why, in such craven terror of your first wife's family (to whom you felt so intellectually superior), you nonetheless remarried, within eighteen months, a woman much younger than you, nearly as young as I, which must have shocked and infuriated your former in-laws. Yes? (Or did you cease caring about what they thought? Had you siphoned enough money from the father-in-law by that time?)

  Your second wife, V——, would be spared an accidental death, and will survive you by many years. I have never felt any rancor for voluptuous—now rather fattish—Viola, who came into your life after I'd departed from it. Maybe, in a way, I felt some sympathy for the young woman, guessing that in time you would betray her too. (And haven't you? Numberless times?)

  I have forgotten nothing, Dr. K———. While you, to your fatal disadvantage, have forgotten almost everything.

  Dr. K———, Jody, shall I confess: I had secrets from you even then. Even when I seemed to you transparent, translucent. Deep in the marrow of my bones, a wish to bring our illicit love to an end. An end worthy of grand opera, not mere melodrama. When you sat me on your knees naked—"nude" was your preferred term—and gobbled me up with your eyes—"Beautiful! Aren't you a little beauty!"—even then I exulted in my secret thoughts. You seemed at times drunk with love—lust?—for me, kissing, tonguing, nuzzling, sucking ... sucking nourishment from me like a vampire. (The stress of fatherhood and maintaining a dutiful-son-in-law pose as well as the "renowned theologian" were exhausting you, maddening you in your masculine vanity. Of course, in my naivete I had no idea.) Yet laying my hand on the hot-skinned nape of your neck I saw a razor blade clenched in my fingers, and the first astonished spurts of your blood, with such vividness that I can see it now. I began to faint, my eyes rolled back in my head, you caught me in your arms ... and for the first time (I assume it was the first time) you perceived your spun-gold angel as something of a concern, a liability, a burden not unlike the burden of a neurotic, anxiety-prone wife. Darling, what's the matter with you? Are you playing, darling? Beautiful girl, it isn't amusing to frighten me when I adore you so.

  Gripping my chilled fingers in your hot, hard fingers and pressing my hand against your big powerfully beating heart.

  Why not? why not try? try to collect?—that heart.

  That's owed me.

  How inspired I am, composing this letter, Dr. K———! I've been writing feverishly, scarcely pausing to draw breath. It's as if an angel is guiding my hand. (One of those tall leathery-winged angels of wrath, with fierce medieval faces, you see in German woodcuts!) I've reread certain of your published works, Dr. K———, including the heavily footnoted treatise on the Dead Sea Scrolls that established your reputation as an ambitious young scholar in his early thirties. Yet it all seems so quaint and long ago, back in the twentieth century, when God and Satan were somehow more real to us, like household objects ... I've been reading of our primitive religious origins, how God-Satan were once conjoined but are now, in our Christian tradition, always separated. Fatally separated. For we Christians can believe no evil of our deity, we could not love him then.

  Dr. K———, as I write this letter my malfunctioning heart with its mysterious murmur now speeds, now slows, now gives a lurch, in excited knowledge that you are reading these words with a mounting sense of their justice. A heavy rain has begun to fall, drumming against the roof and windows of the place in which I am living, the identical rain (is it?) that drums against the roof and windows of your house only a few (or is it many?) miles away; unless I live in a part of the country thousands of miles distant, and the rain is not identical. And yet I can come to you at any time. I am free to come, and to go; to appear, and to disappear. It may even be that I've contemplated the charming facade of your precious granddaughter's Busy Bee Nursery School, even as I've shopped for shoes in the company of V——, though the jowly-faced, heavily made-up woman with the size 10 feet was oblivious of my presence, of course.

  And just last Sunday I revisited the Museum of Natural History, knowing there was a possibility that you might return. For it had seemed to me possible that you'd recognized me on the steps, and sent a signal to me with your eyes, without Lisle noticing; you were urging me to return to meet with you, alone. The deep erotic bond between us will never be broken, you know: you entered my virginal body, you took from me my innocence, my youth, my very soul. My angel! Forgive me, return to me, I will make up to you the suffering you've endured for my sake.

  I waited, but you failed to return.

  I waited, and my sense of mission did not subside but grew more certain.

  I found myself the sole visitor on the gloomy fourth floor, in the Hall of Dinosaurs. My footsteps echoed faintly on the worn marble floor. A white-haired museum guard with a paunch like yours regarded me through drooping eyelids; he sat on a canvas chair, hands on his knees. Like a wax dummy. Like one of those trompe l'oeil mannequins. You know: those uncanny, lifelike figures you see in contemporary art collections, except this slouching figure wasn't bandaged in white. Silently I passed by him as a ghost might pass. My (gloved) hand in my bag, and my fingers clutching a razor blade I've learned by this time to wield with skill, and courage.

  Stealthily I circled the Hall of Dinosaurs looking for you, but in vain; stealthily I drew up behind the dozing guard, feeling my erratic heartbeat quicken with the thrill of the hunt ... but of course I let the moment pass; it was no museum guard but the renowned Dr. K——for whom the razor blade was intended. (Though I had not the slightest doubt that I could have wielded my weapon against the old man, simply out of frustration at not finding you, and out of female rage at centuries of mistreatment, exploitation; I might have slashed his carotid artery and quickly retreated without a single blood drop splashed onto my clothing; even as the old man's life bled out onto the worn marble floor, I would have descended to the near-deserted third floor of the museum, and to the second, to mingle unnoticed with Sunday visitors crowded into a new computer graphics exhibit. So easy!) I found myself adrift amid rubbery dinosaur replicas, some of them enormous as Tyrannosaurus rex, some the size of oxen, and others fairly small, human-sized; I admired the flying reptiles, with their long beaks and clawed wings; in a reflecting surface over which one of these prehistoric creatures soared, I admired my pale, hot-skinned face and floating ashy hair. My darling, you whispered, I will always adore you. That angelic smile!

  Dr. K———, see? I'm smiling still.

  Dr. K———! Why are you standing there so stiffly, at an upstairs window of your house? Why are you cringing, overcome by a sickening fear? Nothing will happen to you that is not just. That you do not deserve.

  These pages in your shaking hand you'd like to tear into shreds—but don't dare. Your heart pounds, in terror of being snatched from your chest! Desperately you're contemplating—but will decide against—showing my letter to the police. (Ashamed of what the letter reveals of the renowned Dr.K———!) You are contemplating—but will decide against—showing my letter to your wife, for you've had exhausting sessions of soul-bearing,
confession, exoneration with her, numerous times; you've seen the disgust in her eyes. No more! And you haven't the stomach to contemplate yourself in the mirror, for you've had more than enough of your own face, those stricken guilty eyes. While I, the venomous diamond-head, contentedly spin my gossamer web amid the beams of your basement, or in the niche between your desk and the wall, or in the airless cave beneath your marital bed, or—most delicious prospect!—inside the very mattress of the child's bed in which, when she visits her grandparents in the house on Richmond Street, beautiful little Lisle sleeps.

  Invisible by day as by night, spinning my web, out of my guts, tireless and faithful—happy.

  Split/Brain

  In that instant of entering the house by the rear door when she sees, or thinks she sees, a fleeting movement like a shadow in the hallway beyond the kitchen and she hears a sharp intake of breath or panting, it is her decision not to retreat in panicked haste from her house but to step forward, sharply calling, Jeremy? Is that you? For she'd seen her sister-in-law's car parked on the shoulder of the road some fifty feet before the driveway to her house, she is certain it must be Veronica's Toyota, which Jeremy often drives; it occurs to her now that she'd expected to see Veronica at the clinic that morning but Veronica hadn't turned up—like buzzing hornets these thoughts rush at her even as she calls out more sharply, Is that you? Jeremy? For the boy shouldn't be here in this house at this time, uninvited; she'd left the rear door unlocked, as frequently she did, driving into town to the clinic, returning, and later in the day driving back into town to the clinic, a distance of precisely 2.6 miles, of which she has memorized each intervening property, driveway, intersecting road and street, to be played, replayed, and run backward in her mind as she drives into town, to the rehab clinic, to see her husband, and returns to the house in preparation for driving back to the clinic, which is, she has come to realize, but the preparation for returning home. For much of this morning she has been at the clinic, tries to arrive precisely at 8 A.M., when the clinic opens its front doors to visitors, for she is an early riser, both she and Jim are early risers, rarely sleep past dawn even on bitter-cold sunless winter mornings. And at the clinic at her husband's bedside usually she will remain until 7 P.M., when, exhausted, she returns home for the remainder of the day. At Jim's bedside she reads to him, checks e-mail on her laptop, and reads to Jim those messages, ever decreasing in frequency, that seem to her important for Jim to hear. With childlike logic she is thinking, If I am a good wife, if I am good, God will spare us, God will make him well again, and so far her prayer, which she understands is both craven and futile, has not been entirely scorned, for Jim has been transferred from the hospital to the clinic and there is the promise that one day soon he will be sent back home to recuperate and to recover his lost strength. Already he no longer needs to be fed through a tube, already the color is returning to his face, which had been deathly pale. Though still he tires easily, nods off in the midst of speaking, friends who come to visit have learned to disguise their shock and discomfort seeing Jim Gould so changed, poor Jim who'd once been so vital, so energetic, smiling and good-natured and much loved, and now his body seems to have shrunken, he has lost more than fifty pounds, his hands are weak, legs useless, the once-powerful muscles atrophied, and now his legs are reduced to bones beneath thin hairless skin, terrible to see. And so she has learned not to see. And so she has learned to disguise her fear. And so she has learned to smile as nurses learn to smile. And when he asks her please to massage his legs, his legs hurt, she smiles and kneads the bone-hard legs, thin now as the legs of a young child; massaging these legs, she jokes with her husband, she loves him so, she would die for this man, she believes, and yet how fatigued she has grown in the past several weeks, how exasperated with her husband's demands. Jim has become unpredictable in his moods, quick to be come angry. This morning, hurrying to get to the clinic, she'd forgotten to bring with her the latest issue of a professional journal for which her husband has been an advisory editor; seeing she'd forgotten it, Jim was visibly disappointed and sulky, and she'd said, Darling, I'll drive back to get the journal, it's no trouble, and immediately he said, No, it isn't necessary, you can bring it next time, and she insisted yes, of course she will drive back to get it for him, she has other errands in town that need to be done this morning. And anyway, Jim is scheduled for tests this morning. And she kisses his cheek, tells him she will return within the hour; in secret she's childishly relieved to be able to leave the clinic so soon after arriving, this dour dark dimly lighted place, the smells, don't think of the smells, the accumulated smells of decades. And the other patients, and the other visitors, who are mainly women her age and older, whom she has come to recognize at the clinic, as they have come to recognize her, and who dread the sight of one another outside the clinic. She is one of the few who takes pains with her appearance, not a vain woman but a woman well aware of her face, her body, how men regard her, or once regarded her, with more than ordinary interest. On this weekday she is wearing an attractive creamy pale yellow pantsuit that is flattering to her shapely body, she thinks, and around her throat a peach-colored Italian scarf; through her life she has been a big-boned beautiful girl yet never what one would call fat—the word fat is offensive to her ears, obscene. Her face is round, full-cheeked, her skin slightly flushed as if sunburned—a classic brunette beauty, her husband has called her—but now, seeing herself in the rearview mirror of her car on the way home, she is shocked by her creased forehead, feathery white lines bracketing her eyes and at the corners of her mouth, the coral lipstick she'd so carefully applied that morning eaten off. A little cry of distress escapes her: It is unfair! My face is wearing out, I am still young. For she is seven years younger than the stricken man in the rehab clinic. How many years she'd been the young est wife in their social circle. And in her heart she is the youngest still, and the one men glance at, gaze at with admiration. And turning into Constitution Hill, and onto Westerly Drive, she sees a familiar car parked at a crooked angle partly in the roadway, partly on the shoulder, her sister-in-law's black Toyota so oddly parked. This is a car her seventeen-year-old nephew, Jeremy, has been driving recently. She feels a tinge of disapproval; neither her brother nor her sister-in-law seems capable of disciplining Jeremy, who has been suspended from high school for drugs, threatening other students, threatening a teacher; she knows that Jeremy has a juvenile record for break-ins in his neighborhood near the university. Yet turning into her driveway she ceases thinking of her nephew. The driveway is a steep graveled lane bordered by a straggling evergreen hedge; with her husband so suddenly hospitalized, now in rehab, no one has tended to the property, she scarcely thinks of it, seeing that litter has been blown into the shrubbery, old newspapers and fliers scattered across the lawn, the only time she notices the condition of the property is when she's in the car, and as soon as she steps out of the car to enter the house, she will forget. Too many things to think of—it's unfair. And now pushing the rear door that opens too readily to her touch, seeing that fleeting shadow against an inner wall. And she thinks with a rush of anger, He believes that I am with Jim, at the clinic and not here, he believes that no one is home. For it has been said of Trudy Gould that she is a saint, every day at the hospital and now at the rehab clinic, she is selfless, uncomplaining at her husband's bedside for months. She knows how people speak of her, she takes pride in being so spoken of, in fact she is terrified of the empty house, bitterly now she regrets having no children, yes but both she and her husband decided that the risk of adoption was too great, bringing a child of unknown parents into their orderly household. And now entering her kitchen with a deliberate clatter of her heels, expensive Italian leather shoe-boots with a two-inch heel, she feels a thrill of something like defiance, she will not be frightened of her own nephew, tall lanky sloe-eyed Jeremy, whom she has known since his birth. Aunt Trudy, the boy calls her, or called her until two years ago, when so much seemed to change in him. Still she thinks that Jeremy h
as always liked her; he would not hurt her. Entering the hallway now, calling in a scolding voice, Jeremy! I see you, and seeing now that the boy's face is strangely flushed, he is panting and his eyes are dilated and damp—he is on some drug, she thinks—yet even now, advancing upon him sharp-tongued and scolding, Jeremy! What are you doing here! How dare you, as he springs at her panting like a dog, knocking her back against the wall, even now she is disbelieving—He would not hurt me, this is my house —and somehow they are in the kitchen, they are struggling together in the kitchen, a chair is overturned, in his hoarse raw boy's voice Jeremy is crying, Shut up, shut up you old bag, old bitch, even as she screams at him to get away, to stop what he is doing, she slaps at him, blindly Jeremy has snatched up a knife from a kitchen counter, a small paring knife, yet sharp, blindly he is stabbing at her, his aunt whom he seems not to know, does not recognize, astonished Aunt Trudy he has known all his life, staring at her now with glassy eyes narrowed to slits. Helplessly she lifts her fleshy forearms against him, her outstretched hands, to shield herself from the terrible stabbing blows; she is not scolding now, her voice is faltering, pleading now, No no, Jeremy please no don't hurt me you don't want to hurt me, Jeremy no as the short sharp blade flies at her like a maddened bird of prey, striking her face, her throat, her breasts straining at the now-damp creamy pale yellow fabric of her jacket top, this furious stranger who resembles her seventeen-year-old nephew will back off from her to leave her sprawled on the sticky kitchen floor to suffocate in her own blood, her lungs have been punctured, her throat is filling up with blood, in something like elation he has thrown down the bloody paring knife, I told you! I told you! I told you Goddamn you leave me alone! he stumbles from the kitchen, runs upstairs though it has been years since he has been upstairs in his aunt's house on Westerly Drive, wildly he rummages through bureau drawers, leaving bloody fingerprints, bloody footprints, as in an antic dance in the striking baroque design of his Nike soles, man is he high, flying high, this older girl he's crazy for, a girl with whom he shares his drugs, has sex and shares drugs, he will boast to her that he hadn't planned anything of what happened in the rich woman's house, he'd acted out of sheer instinct, he'd told her he knows a house over in Constitution Hill, there's a woman who is gone all day at the hospital with her husband, he did not tell the girl that the woman was his aunt, boasting he'd be safe roaming the house as long as he wanted looking for money and for things to take, over in Constitution Hill where the houses are so large, lots so large and set off from their neighbors, no one will see him and if there's trouble no one will hear it ... In that instant of pushing open the door she sees all this, as a single lightning flash can illuminate a nighttime landscape of gnarled and unimaginable intricacy, so in that instant she sees, sheerly by instinct she retreats from the door that has swung open too readily to her touch, in the tight-fitting Italian leather shoe-boots she runs stumbling down the gravel driveway, of course she'd seen her sister-in-law's black Toyota parked out of place by the road, she'd recognized the Toyota by the pattern of dents on the rear bumper and by the first letters of the license plate, VER; no, she will not retreat, certainly she will not retreat. Instead she turns the car into the steep gravel driveway. At the rear of the house, which is the door she and Jim always use, she sees, or thinks she sees, that the door is just slightly ajar; still there is time to retreat, with a part of her brain she knows I must not go inside, Jim would not want me to go inside, for her responsibility is to her husband back at the clinic, waiting for her, but this is her house, in which she has lived with her husband, Jim Gould, for twenty-six years; no one has the right to keep her from entering this house, no one has the right to enter this house without her permission, even a relative, even her shy-sullen sloe-eyed nephew Jeremy, and so with an air of defiance she pushes into the kitchen, clatter of heels on the kitchen tile in that instant seeing a fleeting movement like a shadow in the hall beyond the kitchen, she hears a sharp intake of breath or panting, in that instant a rush of pure adrenaline flooding her veins, she refuses to run stumbling and screaming down the gravel drive to summon help, a fleshy woman in her early fifties, yet still girlish, in her manner and in her speech, she will not stagger next door where a Hispanic housekeeper will take her in, in this way save her, dialing 911 as Mrs. Gould collapses onto a kitchen chair, winded, panting like a terrified animal, that will not happen, she will not give in to fear, she will not flee from her own house, she will not be saved from suffocating in her own blood, it is her decision, she is Jim Gould's classic brunette beauty, she has never been a vain woman but she thinks well of herself, she is not a weak woman like her sister-in-law and so she will not retreat in undignified haste from her own house, instead she will step forward with a scolding clatter of her shoe-boot heels, sharply calling, Jeremy? Is that you?