My Heart Laid Bare by Joyce Carol Oates
Some days later confiding in her, lying in each other’s naked arms, a strand of her wavy hair across his face, their breaths and their heartbeats synchronized as if they were two fine-tuned musical instruments, he tells her he’s heard (from Aaron Deerfield) that in town it’s been believed that they’ve been lovers for years and that he, and not Abraham Licht, is Melanie’s father; and Rosamund says sighing, I know, I’ve guessed.)
16.
Short-tempered as a hornet, eyes bright with antagonism, he dismisses this “miraculous” election: the triumph of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the defeat of Herbert Hoover, the New Deal for the Forgotten Man. “Fools and knaves. Speak to me not of the ‘glib and oily art’ of politics.”
But, Darian argues, Roosevelt is different.
Yes, Rosamund agrees, daring to oppose him, Roosevelt is different.
With dignity he rises from his chair; with dignity, manages to maintain his balance; his thin cheeks, hawklike features, the stain of old ivory, a fleeting elderly beauty . . . now his heart’s laid bare, for greedy daws to peck at.
STUMBLING IN THE marsh where they’ll find me, but he isn’t hurt, nor even short of breath; refuses to allow them to drive him into Muirkirk so that Deerfield can check him over. No no no. I am the custodian of these bones and will not consent. Though his eyesight has deteriorated. Cataracts, and maybe glaucoma. Though there’s a warty growth on his throat just below the left ear. Though his old-man’s piss emerges in sullen dribbles, sometimes trickling down his leg. And his head, his brain, aswirl, abuzz, a flood of stars winking in Canis Major have bored through his castle wall and farewell king! farewell.
Yet he will not consent.
Saying coldly, even as they half carry him back to the house, “Abraham Licht is in perfect health for his years, his circumstances and his suffering.”
DO YOU THINK he knows? the guilty lovers whisper to each other as all guilty lovers whisper, frightened and yet exulting in their adultery. Do you think he . . . senses? Poor Abraham! Kissing, tongueing each other, wishing only to press together so there’s no separation between them; not even the separation of thought. Knowing they’re in danger should the old man guess their adultery yet unable to resist loving, their bliss, their greed, what are they to do, what is the right thing to do, the decent thing, the moral thing, the ethical thing, the pragmatic thing, for they must make love for they love each other so, it’s anguish to be denied their love, their bodies’ urgency, after so many years of denial, they no longer think of Abraham Licht except to torment themselves Do you think he knows? And, if he does . . . !
What must happen, must happen.
17.
Prowling the leafless forest and marsh, at least the outer edges of the marsh where the earth is frozen; crusts of ice like broken teeth beneath his booted feet; his nostrils like a stallion’s flaring steam—“Who’s that? Who?” The woman singing to him; humming; combing her long pale hair in the mist, he doesn’t hear, he ignores her, like Odysseus he’ll stop his ears and will not hear, it isn’t time; the heavy shotgun slung beneath an arm for Abraham Licht, Esquire, is a country gentleman, a gentleman-farmer, a hunter, seeking in the idle diversion of sport some replication of The Game, for The Game is both hunter and prey, prey and hunter; in herringbone tweed trousers baggy at the knees, a stained cashmere topcoat, rakish old homburg propped on his head like Jimmy Walker. In the three-way mirror in the dressing room at Lyle’s Gentlemen’s Clothiers, Lexington Avenue, Abraham Licht modeled to perfection this coat, fitting his broad shoulders snugly yet comfortably, $740 was not too high a price for such style and beauty, $7,400 might as easily have been tossed down for he was a millionaire in those halcyon days. AT&T up. Standard Oil, up. Cole Motors, up. Westinghouse, up. And Liebknecht, Inc., steadily rising.
Still the woman sings, teasing and seductive. If his eyes were better he’d see her . . . but maybe he doesn’t want to see her. He stalks away, swinging the shotgun at his side. It’s loaded but he hasn’t yet wished to test its power; he knows the detonation will be deafening; Darian will hear, and make a fuss; Rosamund will hear, and make a worse fuss. Ice veins have formed in the creases of his face, like burning wires.
SOME DAYS, CLEAR-FROST days, Melanie begs to come with him.
“Daddy, can I? Daddy please!” Smiling up at him, the pink knitted cap already on her head though crookedly since she’d pulled it on herself. “Momma won’t know.”
“Yes, darlin’. If you hurry.”
But Momma does know, Momma always knows and calls her back.
For the shotgun terrifies Momma. “Abraham, for God’s sake. Don’t.”
“It isn’t loaded, Mrs. Licht. What’s to fear from an unloaded gun?” he teases. “If your conscience is clear.”
The child is his child after all. That, he knows.
Clambering outside, calling as if it doesn’t matter to him in the slightest, “Coming with your Dadda, puss? Or no?” and Melanie laughs, and dashes after him; and her mother calls sharply, “Melanie, no,” and the child is rooted to the spot, already her little nose is running, laughing she’ll run to Dadda’s side, no she’ll turn and hurry back into the house, he relents, he forgives her, he understands, it isn’t yet time, go back to the house darlin’ and comfort your momma, running like a frightened cat back to the opened door where, breath steaming, winter sunlight flashing in her eyeglasses like flame, her mother calls her name.
“Melanie. Melanie!”
THIRTY-THREE YEARS OLD and it’s the first great passion of his life, and will be the only great passion of his life for he’ll marry the woman after his father’s death, let all of Muirkirk buzz with scandal. Never has Darian been so inspired; never so crazed; even away from his studio he’s composing music, even in his sleep, wild ecstatic music of love fulfilled, of love so ravenous it can’t be fulfilled; forbidden love; guilty love; the love of sister and brother; transcendent love; ordinary love, what people do all the time. He’s on fire with ideas! Can’t transcribe them quickly enough, his fingers are aching! A symphony for voices . . . a trio for flute, cello and echo-chamber piano . . . wordless oratorios . . . a sonata in which aleatory sounds complement the piano . . . a four-hour piece for chamber orchestra, special instruments and chorus to be titled Robin, the Miller’s Son: A Tale of Destiny . . . which will eventually be performed when the composer is forty-two years old, as irony would have it on 10 May 1942, at Carnegie Hall, by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, such a long time to wait! the composer’s admirers marvel but Darian Licht isn’t a bitter man, Darian Licht’s a man perpetually on fire, perpetually in love.
Or so his music proclaims.
DON’T LET FATHER know. I will call you soon.
Millie, from whom Darian hasn’t heard in more than a year, has sent a packet of clippings to Darian, guessing he doesn’t read the New York papers, indeed the world of politics and racial strife is distant from him, and not very real; now that he’s music director of the Muirkirk Consolidated School District, a position he accepted for the salary exclusively (though it isn’t much of a salary, as Abraham Licht allowed him to know), he’s too busy to read any newspaper; Millie has sent clippings PRINCE ELIHU SHOT DEAD IN HARLEM the headlines read NEGRO REVOLUTIONARY ASSASSINATED BY UNIDENTIFIED NEGROES. An ugly account of a black leader shot down in the street outside his fortresslike house, but Darian’s perplexed what this has to do with him. He studies the accompanying photographs . . . but this isn’t his brother Elisha, certainly; he assumes Millie means him to think that “Prince Elihu” is Elisha, for otherwise why would she send the clippings and warn him against letting their father know? But this angry-looking Prince Elihu, identified as African or Jamaican, is no one Darian has ever set eyes on in his life, he’s sure.
Darian destroys the clippings, not wanting Rosamund to discover them, either. His older sister has had a “drinking problem” for some time, Darian knows, for Warren Stirling has so hinted to him; Darian thinks he’ll call Millie soon, yes he should call Millie
Better to wait for her to call him. If she ever does.
18.
It’s an accident, yet they blame him.
The mailman’s low-slung car is stuck in mud out on the Pike, his tires spinning helplessly so what’s he do but climb out of the car of course and go to knock at the Lichts’ door, he’s an acquaintance of Darian Licht, went to school with Darian in fact, but Abraham Licht peering from a window doesn’t recognize him, Abraham Licht’s eyes are bad and he’s had a bad night, a succession of bad nights, he’s convinced that his enemies have come for him, federal agents have come for him as long ago they came for him and ’Lisha, and they got away across rooftops barely escaping with their lives, bullets flying past them, bullets grazing their heads, and this is a special order of the secretary of the treasury since Abraham Licht knows the inside story of what happened in October 1929, he rushes for his shotgun, locked in his study and in perpetual readiness for just such an emergency; he means only to frighten away the intruder (he will swear afterward) but somehow one of the barrels is discharged, the explosion is deafening, buckshot shatters a window and sprays glass everywhere and the kick of the gun knocks Abraham backward onto the floor, and there’s Darian white-faced entering the room, Father? My God, all you all right? and Rosamund behind him staring and Abraham is on hands and knees crawling to pick up the gun for there’s another barrel remaining to be discharged, but Darian rudely wrestles the gun from him, Father, no! God damn it no—struggling with Abraham Licht whose shoulder is dislocated, yet he feels no pain, he’s ashamed, repentant, a fool in the woman’s eyes, he manages to get to his feet and runs from the house by a rear door before anyone can stop him, he’s bareheaded, in his shirt-sleeves and stocking feet, he runs into the marsh, without boots or shoes he runs into the frozen marsh where like a cagey wounded old beast he eludes his son and his wife refusing to answer their desperate calls, hiding in the marsh burrowed in icy mud and underbrush for the remainder of the long day.
And when he returns at dusk the shotgun is gone.
And never again will anyone in the household speak of it, including Abraham Licht.
AS IF I never was.
Stooped over the hot flames, poker in hand. Tears gathering in the creases of his face, in whiskers and eyelashes; both whiskers and eyelashes singed; but he’s determined to destroy all incriminating evidence; all evidence that involves Abraham Licht; he must erase Abraham Licht; every document, every financial record, every worthless share of stock in every extinct company, Liebknecht’s secret formula, his most recent cosmological speculations and coded journal entries and as many as two thousand pages of the memoir titled My Heart Laid Bare, the work of sixty years and the labor of his life.
Except Rosamund is knocking frantically at the door, begs him to unlock the door, the house is filling with smoke, what is he doing? what is he burning? in the fireplace? but the chimney is clogged as he must know; but Abraham pays the woman no heed, he has broken off all relations with her and with his son, he feels only a lofty scorn for the adulterous conspiring lovers, Abraham please what are you doing? won’t you unlock the door? striking her fists against it, she’s a powerful woman for one so young, so slender and well-bred, like all of Abraham Licht’s wives she’s a well-bred woman and yet she has betrayed him, he pays her no heed, he’s mesmerized by the fire, by clouds of smoke emerging from the fire, flames leaping and crackling greedy for all he can feed them, a notarized document pertaining to the Santiago de Cuba Company bursts into flame and vanishes within seconds, several yellowed copies of Frelicht’s Tips, stationery bearing the letterheads of the Panama Canal, Ltd., and X. X. Anson & Sons Copper and the Society for the Reclamation & Restoration of E. Auguste Napoléon and here’s a scented love letter from a woman named Eva (whose heart he broke, she’s accusing him) and here a packet of unopened letters from Millicent (who having broken his heart was never to be allowed to mend it) and here a semi-illiterate letter from one “Felix Bies, M.D.” threatening litigation and here in a cascade the myriad papers of his memoir and coded speculations on the ligatures between distant constellations and the most immediate human actions, speculations on Past, Present and Future burning as one; for he understands that he must die soon in his sleep or (better still) in the marsh, in the wintry marsh where no one will find him.
So he pays no heed to the woman’s raised voice. Or to a child’s crying. And by the time his son returns home the task is completed, everything destroyed, or nearly; only blackened scraps and wads of paper remaining; fireplace, hearth, the cluttered room itself filthy with ash.
THE .38-CALIBER HANDGUN. A weight in his jacket pocket. He intends to throw it far into the marsh. Where with spring and the melting of ice it will sink from sight. Where it will never be found or if found linked to him except I refrained from using it, I might have used it yet did not, four bullets were all I would have needed yet I did not, remember me with kindness.
THE PILGRIM
The place where sunlight ages and withers to Night, the place where the trees are Night, where the woman walks in the mist, where the woman brushes her long pale-golden hair and sings, the air winks and glitters with cold, suddenly he’s young again, on young springy legs he’s running, he’s flying, his feet barely skim the surface of the broken marsh grasses, to the East where no one knows him, to the West where no one knows him, to the North where ice clusters are blinding, the winter winds are deafening, someone is whispering his name, someone walking in mist knows his name, it’s time she says, it’s peace she promises, it’s solitude, it’s oblivion, it’s the place of Night, the place where his children are waiting, where the world’s voices converge to one, deafening, and the light blinding, she draws him to her, she whispers his name, his hair is grown long and filmy-white caught in the tallest branches of the spider-trees, lichen grows in patches on his skin, his feet are tangled in the cattails, his fingers are tendrils and roots, the breath that has steamed and panted so hotly turns now to ice particles, the flaring stallion’s nostrils are coated with ice, these clutching fingers that are ice, she promises Night, she promises sleep, eyelashes stiffening with ice, the curve of the eyeball hard with ice, the lungs coated with ice, the spinal column that’s ice, the veins that are ice, a tree of ice, a constellation of ice, not the most fierce of winter suns can penetrate such trees, not the most fierce of winter winds can melt such trees, such a place of icy sleep, such Night.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © by Star Black
JOYCE CAROL OATES is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award; and the New York Times bestsellers The Accursed and The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
ALSO BY JOYCE CAROL OATES
Accursed
American Appetites
BelleFleur
Black Dahlia and White Rose
Black Girl White Girl
Bloodsmoor Romance
Carthage
Dear Husband
Faith of a Writer
Falls
Gravedigger’s Daughter
I’ll Take You There
In Rough Country
Lost Landscape
Marya: A Life
Mudwoman
My Heart Laid bare
Sacrifice
Them
CREDITS
Cover design by Steve Attardo
Cover artwork © by Pierre Mornet
COPYRIGHT
MY HEART LAID BARE. Copyright © 1998 by The Ontario Review, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST ECCO PAPERBACK EDITION PUBLISHED 2015.
EPub Edition April 2015 ISBN 9780062269263
ISBN 978-0-06-226925-6
15 16 17 18 19 DIX/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor