My Heart Laid Bare by Joyce Carol Oates
3.
Father returns suddenly, Father is home again, after the terrible quarrel with Harwood when Harwood is sent away forever (to Canada? to Mexico? to South America?) he remains in Muirkirk for nearly six weeks, and sometimes he locks himself away in his bedroom and no one dares knock on the door and sometimes he leaves the house before dawn and is gone until midnight and sometimes he glances in Esther’s direction without seeing her and sometimes he glances in her direction and sees her . . . and it is clear that he loves her, he adores her, too tender to scold if she blunders in her recitations, if she strikes the wrong notes on the piano, if she hasn’t Darian’s talent, or Millicent’s beauty, or the trick of holding his rapt attention as ’Lisha does . . . .
Love is enough, Father murmurs aloud, why isn’t love enough?
Come here, Esther, little one, Father whispers, his breath smelling of whiskey, oh, don’t bother me, Esther, please don’t hang on me like that, you aren’t a baby any longer, don’t stare into my face.
To Darian he says suddenly, It may be time, mysteriously he says, It may be time now for you, and Esther is jealous for a week as Father plans (in defiance of Reverend Woodcock) a campaign to introduce Darian to the music-loving populace of the State . . . beginning, if all goes well, with his début in Carnegie Hall. Which pieces should he play? Which pieces best demonstrate his remarkable piano technique, his virtuosity, unparalleled in any child his age on this side of the Atlantic? (There is a Mozart rondo in which Darian’s fingers flash, there is a “Minute Waltz” of Chopin’s that dazzles the eye no less than the ear, and one or two of the boy’s own compositions are impressive if rather discordant . . . .It is so difficult to choose, perhaps they will require the services of a professional manager after all.)
If only Darian were younger, if only Father had not waited so long! . . . for it is difficult to bill the boy as a prodigy when, clearly, he is no longer a child, despite his slender frame and thin-cheeked face, he is twelve years old, is he? or nearly? but might well pass for a child of ten, if dressed appropriately. It might even be a possibility (so Father muses aloud, pulling at his chin as if it were bearded, and fixing Darian with a bright calculating eye) to present him as a girl, for the music-loving populace might well prefer a girl, up there onstage, seated at an enormous concert grand piano, playing those astonishingly difficult pieces, Chopin, Mozart, isn’t there something of Czerny, and Liszt, and . . .
Darian sulks, Darian dares whisper No, all the household is in a turmoil because Darian has whispered No, and Millie and ’Lisha seem to have taken his side (though they do not risk Father’s anger by saying so aloud), and Katrina adds to the upset by telling Father it is a very poor idea indeed, doesn’t he know that Darian’s heart isn’t strong, he tires rapidly, in the winter months in particular he is susceptible to all sorts of colds and flus and congestions, can it be that he, Darian’s father, has actually forgotten?
Boldly the old woman says, Do you want to lose your youngest son, as you have lost your eldest?
And Father has no reply.
And Father retreats, and says no more about Darian’s debut at Carnegie Hall, and is gone from Muirkirk, taking Millie and ’Lisha with him, within a week.
4.
And Father is gone, and within a few months Darian is gone, to boarding school in Vanderpoel; and Esther falls in love with Dr. Deerfield who is so friendly to her when he sees her in town, no she falls in love with Dr. Deerfield’s son Aaron, no she is in love with no one, she hates and adores them all, at dusk she prowls the lane behind the old mill, she cuts through the Mackays’ cow pasture, makes her way in stealth in silence (as a red-winged hawk, as a barn owl, as a galloping black colt) along the unnamed dirt road that parallels Main Street, staring into windows, puzzling over lives, glimpses of lives, behind gauzy curtains, behind partly drawn blinds, How do people live in a family? the girl wonders, What are the things they say to one another, what are the things they don’t need to say?
You cannot run wild like this, Katrina scolds.
Katrina grips her shoulders, Katrina scolds, You are a Licht—don’t you know who you are?
BY DAY THE men and women of Muirkirk who have occasion to know Esther Licht know her as a sweet child, a friendly child, despite her strange ways, her painful shyness, that high startled laughter, she is a well-mannered child too despite her clumsiness, and intelligent if you can get her to talk, if you can get her to look you in the eye, attractive too though not pretty, the poor thing will never be pretty, not as her sister Millicent is pretty, but does it matter? The Woodcocks are fond of Esther Licht, the Ewings, the Mackays, Mrs. Oakes, Mrs. Kincaid, her tutor Mr. Ryan, Dr. Deerfield speaks of her with surprised pleasure, her interest in doctoring, nursing, medicine, “making hurt things well . . . .” Esther is so plain-featured and graceless, there is something appealing about her, she hasn’t the charm of her sister Millicent, the older Thurston and Elisha, certainly she doesn’t strike the eye or the ear as Abraham Licht’s daughter, which is why they like her.
(Not that Abraham Licht isn’t liked, or anyway admired. Not that Muirkirk isn’t grateful for his intermittent interest in the town—he has donated money to several of the churches, to the library, even to the temperance organization in which, as he has said, he doesn’t altogether believe. Not that many of the Muirkirk gentlemen don’t envy him, indeed, and speculate on the sort of life he leads elsewhere, the financial coups, the beautiful women, the excitement . . . .The problem is simply this: no one trusts him. Even as he speaks warmly, and graciously, and convincingly, even then, by some mysterious sort of magic, he fails to convince!)
HOW SAD, THAT lonely child! Motherless since birth; and fatherless much of the time as well; glimpsed wandering by herself in the fields and woods and marshy pastures outside town . . . or, in town, along Main Street, in the square, in the vicinity of the public school, or Dr. Deerfield’s white-shingled house on Bay Street . . . observed in the high-ceilinged reading room of the new library (a gift of Mr. Carnegie’s, the pride of Muirkirk: a magnificent limestone building three stories high, turreted, with an oak-walled gymnasium, nickel baths in the basement, even a tile pool open to all residents of Muirkirk). She has few friends her own age . . . she seems to know few boys and girls her own age . . . but she has recently joined Mrs. Clay’s Temperance Choir, which meets twice weekly in the Methodist Church Hall, and heartily sings such temperance favorites as “King Alcohol”—
King Alcohol has many forms
By which he catches men.
He is a beast of many horns
And ever thus has been!
and “Ten Nights in a Barroom” with its heartrending chorus, which never fails to bring tears to all eyes:
Hear the sweet voice of the child,
Which the nightwinds repeat as they roam!
Oh, who could resist this most pleading of prayers?
“Please, father, dear father, come home!”
5.
On snowy or rain-lashed days Katrina can be prevailed upon to tell her old tales . . . of Robin the miller’s son, and Mina the governor’s daughter . . . and the great white “King of the Wolves” who dwells on Mount Chattaroy . . . and the little girl who disobeyed her grandmother and turned into a turtle . . . and the little boy who disobeyed his grandmother and turned into an ugly giant bullfrog, condemned to croak in protest for the remainder of his life: and a hideous long life it was!
But most disturbing of all the tales, Esther thinks, is that of the king’s son and the king’s daughter which (so Katrina says crossly) Esther isn’t old enough to understand.
Yes I am, says Esther, shivering—yes I am.
No you’re not, says Katrina, because the king’s son and the king’s daughter fell in love, and you don’t know what love is, and you don’t know the kind of love that is forbidden between brother and sister, don’t pretend you do!—Anyway the story took place long ago, a very long time ago, though the marsh was as it is today, the marsh never change
He then returned to the castle, and gave his innocent sister the elixir to drink, telling her it was a delicious liqueur an old woman had given him back in the marsh, it was made of peach brandy and black currants and molasses, and his unsuspecting sister drank of it, and declared it delicious indeed, and smiling upon him bade him drink of it too, but he declined, saying there was no need, he had had his share beforehand, and even as they spoke the princess fell in love with him, her eyes blazed, her heart leapt in her breast, and there was no help for it, the poor child fell in love . . . and very soon she and her wicked brother became lovers . . . and loved each other in secret . . . and the princess’s love was greater than the prince’s . . . and nothing would do but that he love her every minute of the day, and every minute of the night . . . and he began to fear she would suck all his strength from him for her love was so very powerful, there was no end to it, there could never be any end to it, even when the prince grew weary and the princess became great with child . . . but this little Esther does not understand, does she! don’t pretend! . . . and finally the princess grew so jealous of the prince, she berated him for not loving her, and wept, and tore at her fair skin, and wished aloud that they both might die, and sink to the bottom of the marsh where no one would know them, and the princess’s beauty was faded now with anguish, her lips were parched and blistered, her eyes rolled in her head, with love, with love so terrible it could never be undone, never except by death . . . .
So one day, not a year after he had given his beloved the elixir to drink, the wicked prince, fearing his sister would betray him to the king, lured her into the marsh and killed her: strangled her with his bare hands: even as the wretched girl caressed him madly in love of him.
And, seeing that his beloved was dead, and that the world had no meaning for him any longer, the wicked prince soon died: and there was no one to lament him in all the kingdom.
So it was, the king’s son and the king’s daughter died for love of each other, and were buried at the bottom of the marsh, long ago, long before you were born, in this very place.
ESTHER, EARNEST PLAIN-FEATURED Esther, Esther who stares too hard and listens too intensely, why does she sit hunched over, two or three fingers jammed into her mouth, her child’s forehead vexed with thought . . . .She says, O Katrina, it will not happen to Millie and ’Lisha, will it? and Katrina turns from the stove and looks at her, and says carefully, What do you mean, Millie and ’Lisha? and Esther says, Because I saw them together, Katrina, her voice faltering, not wanting to say that she had seen them touch, hadn’t she, in a strange way, she had seen them kiss, for it was a kiss, wasn’t it, a strange sort of half-angry biting kiss, Millie and ’Lisha, blond Millie and dark-skinned ’Lisha, stealing away in the beech grove on the far side of the churchyard where no one would see them . . . except their little sister of whom they took no notice; for no one did.
What do you mean, like Millie and ’Lisha? Katrina asks, her voice rising, her eyes gray as steel wool, and Esther sees something in her face that frightens her, and all she can murmur is, O Katrina please it will not happen, will it, before she rises clumsily to her feet and runs out of the room.
6.
Unsuited for The Game, Father has said, sadly, with finality, but what, wonders the girl, is The Game for which she is unsuited . . . ?
7.
By stealth, by night, making her way along the deserted country road . . . down the long hill by the cider mill, across the bridge that rattles . . . the creek below, the vaporous sky above, a moon made of bone, something fierce and wet and sharp rising from the grass . . . and now she gallops noiselessly past the darkened rear of the livery stable . . . past the darkened rear of the icehouse . . . and here is the Methodist church and here is the pharmacy and here is the school to which she will be going in the fall and here is the new Woolworth’s five-and-dime with the magnificent red and gold signboard, the magnificent show windows (“any article in this window 5 CENTS”) and here is the library with its noble portico and broad sprawling steps and here is the Congregational Church and here the houses of the men and women the boys and girls whom she hates and adores, whom she envies so that her heart lurches in her breast, the lamplight behind the thin gauzy curtains, the glimpse of an arm, a profile, a blurred movement, how do these people live, what are the secret words that pass between them, do they know of The Game, do they know they are doomed never to play The Game, what are the things that pass between them when no stranger is close at hand? The clapboard houses of lower Main Street, the tall brick houses of Muirkirk Avenue, the houses of High Street, Elm Street, Bay Street, the Woodcocks’ residence behind the gray stone Lutheran church, the Ewings’ house, the Oakeses’, the Deerfields’ corner house on Bay, white shingle board, black shutters, a veranda with four elegantly carved white posts, one brick walk leading to the front door and one brick walk leading to the doctor’s office at the rear, the rusted wrought-iron fence Esther’s fingers idly brush, the crooked little gate that can be closed but not locked, a half dozen windows facing the street, lamplight within, firelight within, through the filmy curtains it is possible to see figures inside . . . yet not to be seen by them, never to be seen by them: the doctor in his shirtsleeves, the doctor’s son (whom Esther does not love because she loves no one), the doctor’s wife in the very act of slowly drawing the blinds shut.
By night, by stealth, noiseless, invisible, here and not-here, now stamping her hooves in the wet grass, now flying drunken and elated into the night sky, no one can see her at such privileged moments, no one can name her. My baby? the dead woman had whispered but she is no one’s baby now.
THE SOCIETY FOR THE RECLAMATION & RESTORATION OF E. AUGUSTE NAPOLÉON BONAPARTE
1.
In Corvsgate, in Allentown and in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania . . . in the more affluent suburbs of Philadelphia . . . in New Jersey, in Far Hills, Waterboro, Paterson and the better residential neighborhoods of Newark and New Brunswick . . . there appeared in the winter of 1912–13, a Mr. Gaymead, a Mr. Lichtman, a Mr. Bramier, solicitors as they called themselves for a Wall Street brokerage firm authorized to represent, in North America, the secret Society for the Reclamation & Restoration of E. Auguste Napoléon Bonaparte.
“E. Auguste Napoléon Bonaparte”?—the illegitimate son of the great Emperor, born 1821, the year of the Emperor’s death. And the lost heir to a great fortune.
Which fortune has grown a thousandfold, as one might imagine, since 1821, until at the present time, in the autumn of 1912, it is estimated to be in excess of $300 million—according to a confidential repo
Messrs. Gaymead, Lichtman and Bramier were all three gentlemen of robust middle age, with muttonchop whiskers (Gaymead), flashing pince-nez (Lichtman) and a pencil-thin moustache (Bramier); each dressed like a Wall Street banker, in conservative three-piece suits, though Bramier sometimes sported a pink carnation in his buttonhole and Lichtman sometimes wore a checked silk Ascot tie. One wore a signet ring on his smallest finger stamped with the coat of arms of the House of Bonaparte; another wore a gold watch chain; one cleared his throat officiously; another was in the lawyerly habit of gravely repeating his sentences, as if for a stenographer’s ear. All three were completely devoted, above and beyond their salaries, to the (secret) Society for the Reclamation & Restoration of E. Auguste Napoléon Bonaparte.
Inclined, perhaps, to be rather overpunctilious regarding such matters as birth certificates, genealogies, legal records, deeds of ownership of property, life insurance policies, savings accounts, and the like, these three solicitors could not resist now and then revealing their natural sympathies . . . for though the Society’s negotiations were a matter of the highest confidentiality, and would, in time, provide descendants of Auguste Bonaparte with considerable sums of money (hundreds of thousands of dollars for some, as much as $1 million for others), it was nevertheless the case that Mr. Lichtman could not always resist informing a client about irregular steps being taken by certain not-to-be-named relatives of his, in advancing their claim to the inheritance; and Mr. Gaymead, though stiff and disconcertingly “British” in his manner, might sometimes break into a delighted smile, when surprised by a client’s especially perceptive remark.