My Heart Laid Bare (46 page)

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.”

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

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

—W
ILLIAM
J
AMES, AT THE TIME OF HIS DEATH
, 1910

W
hispers 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.

For white is the hue of purity. Of idealism.

Esther's secret, which she would tell Darian alone of all the world:
Past terror, there's happiness. I am on earth to serve, not to be served.

ZEALOUS ESTHER, IMPULSIVE
Esther, Esther who's so good-hearted and naive writes also to a young man named Aaron Deerfield, away taking premedical courses at the university in Albany. Aaron she's adored since eighth grade; Aaron who's embarrassed by her attention and loyalty yet allows her to love him though he can't, as he's painstakingly explained, love her in return.

Yet, Aaron has made a vow that if he ever loves any young woman (which maybe he can't, he
has
tried) it will be Esther.

Which fills Esther with a hot embarrassed pleasure. As if, indeed, she were already loved.

To Aaron Deerfield, Esther writes several lengthy letters a week, not minding that he replies no more than once a month, and then briefly. It's her privilege to write to him describing her nursing classes, her routine at the hospital, her more interesting cases, providing sharply detailed little sketches of the doctors on the hospital staff, the older nurses, her instructors, her nurse-classmates who are emerging as “characters”—as it's her privilege to love him. But she won't embarrass him by making such claims. Concluding her letters not with
Love
but
As always.

Most of her fellow nurses have boyfriends. Fiancés of one kind or another. Lovers. And some of the older, prettier girls—so excited rumors wash about, spilling and splashing as they will—are said to be involved with doctors at the hospital.

Married men.

(And what are the results of such affairs, sometimes?)

(Of such matters, Esther doesn't write Aaron Deerfield.)

YES ESTHER IS
happy, yes she's privileged. It's human beings that fascinate, more than disease and accident; though these are the means by which she, as a nurse, might come into intimate contact with them.

A fascination of flesh. Examining anatomy-text drawings, photographs. The extraordinary drawings by Leonardo da Vinci reproduced in a portfolio-sized book she'd purchased for $8 in a secondhand-book store in the city. The revelations of the dissection lab, that initially shock, disgust, terrify; then excite and illuminate. For how natural the body is, how . . . ordinary. Yet the amazing subtlety of flesh, its variations in thickness, solidity. How inadequate, mere words: to say of an individual's skin
white, black, colored.
And how strange that we're encased in flesh from birth to death.

Our first obligation is to serve the flesh. Others' flesh.

To relieve pain, to restore health. To allow the spirit to shine forth.

Not to punish by withholding all we can do.

Not to judge, not to moralize, not to punish. Not to give aid to Death.

ESTHER'S HEAD RINGS
from twelve hours, fifteen hours on her feet. Sleepless hours of being commanded to hurry here, to hurry there, do this! do that! and promptly. The hospital is a vast ship at sea amid unpredictable weather, its captain is an elder doctor and his officers a hierarchy of
doctors, exclusively male; below them a hierarchy of nurses and nurses' aides, exclusively female. Esther doesn't yet question this double hierarchy for it seems to her as to everyone else, including the elder, head nurses who are so much more experienced and capable than the younger doctors, that this is the very principle of the universe, inviolable. It's true, in high school, Esther Licht and Aaron Deerfield were both A students and possibly Esther was more imaginative in biology class than Aaron, but neither of them would have thought that Esther, and not Aaron, should go to medical school. Esther's father, and her sister Millie, even Katrina have expressed disapproval of Esther going to nursing school.
Ugh. Blood and bodies. Excrement. How can you soil your hands?

There's the concern, too, unspoken—
Who would wish to marry a nurse?

Yet Esther's happy. No matter she's frequently sick with the flu that passes continuously through the nurses' residence hall and the hospital. Fevers, infections, racking coughs that kill the weaker of the patients, even if they've been hospitalized with other ailments. Such are the facts of medical life, not to be helped. Or so it seems in 1918. Or so Esther wishes to think, in love with her destiny.

IN THE END
, Esther's father agreed to her request, seeing how passionately she wanted to become a nurse. Seeing, perhaps, that like Darian she was stubborn and self-determined, and
would
become a nurse with or without his blessing. Making a show of taking out his checkbook with a flourish—“And how much is a semester's tuition? Or better yet, a year?”

Poor Father. He'd returned to Muirkirk just before Christmas of 1917, exhausted and ill; he'd had a breakdown like the one he'd suffered when Esther was a little girl, many years ago; once again he was forced to abandon his business and retreat to Muirkirk, where Katrina and Esther nursed him back to health.

He'd been sick for nearly three months. He'd lost weight, and aged;
what most frightened Esther, as she wrote to Darian, was
He has aged in his soul. Something has happened of which he will never speak.

Abraham Licht was enough himself to be annoyed that a daughter of his should “wear her heart on her sleeve so openly” for a neighbor's son, Aaron Deerfield; and should admire in such schoolgirl fashion Dr. Deerfield, who was an ordinary village doctor—“A sawbones, as I believe his ilk are called.” Abraham's scorn was rejuvenating to him; as Esther shrewdly saw, her father took heart when there was someone to oppose, a presumed adversary or enemy. It worked out well for her, as she overheard Abraham remarking to Katrina, “Let the girl go to nursing school, if she wants. Away from Muirkirk and the pernicious ‘Deerfield' influence. A daughter of mine in love with such a dolt!”

The days, the weeks, months . . . at the start, Esther kept a meticulous diary but soon fell behind for there wasn't time, never enough time; losing count of all who'd died (and each death so precious, unique) . . . of the babies born (and each birth a miracle, beyond comprehension) . . . and the many letters written in head-on haste and emotion to Aaron Deerfield and others . . . Father, Millie, Darian, Katrina . . . who fail to reply to her in the spirit in which she writes to them, or fail to reply altogether.
Am I too eager with love for them? Do I repel them with my hunger?

At the nursing school, Esther's energy, stamina and idealism are spoken of with awe, admiration, exasperation, in some quarters mockery and envy. To no one's surprise Esther Sophia Licht will graduate first in her class of seventy-three students.

Yet one day in early spring rapidly climbing three flights of stairs to her airless, cramped room, shared with three other nursing students; in a basin of tepid water she washes her face, dries her eyes, pressing a towel against her eyeballs she sees suddenly the blood-rose illuminated in fire where previously it had been dark; and shocks herself by beginning to cry; she, Esther Licht, who never cries, unable to stop crying for many minutes
though by this time she's accustomed to Death and, as she tells herself, happy, very happy.