Give Me Your Heart: Tales of Mystery and Suspense

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Other OTTO PENZLER BOOKS

  by Joyce Carol Oates

  The Barrens

  Beasts

  Rape: A Love Story

  The Female of the Species:

  Tales of Mystery and Suspense

  The Museum of Dr. Moses

  A Fair Maiden

  First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

  First published in the United States of America in 2010 by The Ontario Review.

  Copyright © 2010 by The Ontario Review, Inc.

  The moral right of Joyce Carol Oates to be identifed as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-84887-564-7 (hardback)

  ISBN: 978-1-84887-566-1 (trade paperback)

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-85789-304-8

  Printed in Great Britain.

  Corvus

  An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

  Ormond House

  26-27 Boswell Street

  London WC1N 3JZ

  www.corvus-books.co.uk

  The stories in this collection previously appeared elsewhere:

  “Give Me Your Heart” in Dangerous Women, ed. by Otto Penzler (Mysterious Press, 2005); “Split/Brain” in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, October 2008; “The First Husband” in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, January 2008; “Strip Poker” in Dead Man’s Hand, ed. by Otto Penzler (Harcourt, 2007); “Smother” in Virginia Quarterly Review, Fall 2005; “Tetanus” in TriQuarterly, #131, 2008; “The Spill” in Kenyon Review, Winter 2008; “Bleeed” in Shenandoah, Spring/Summer 2008; “Nowhere” in Conjunctions, 2006; “Vena Cava” in Portents.

  To Richard Trenner

  Contents

  Give Me Your Heart

  Split/Brain

  The First Husband

  Strip Poker

  Smother

  Tetanus

  The Spill

  Nowhere

  Bleeed

  Vena Cava

  Give Me Your Heart

  Dear Dr. K——,

  It’s been a long time, hasn’t it! Twenty-three years, nine months, and eleven days.

  Since we last saw each other. Since you last saw, “nude” on your naked knees, me.

  Dr. K——! The formal salutation isn’t meant as flattery, still less as mockery—please understand. I am not writing after so many years to beg an unreasonable favor of you (I hope), or to make demands, merely to inquire if, in your judgment, I should go through the formality, and the trouble, of applying to be the lucky recipient of your most precious organ, your heart. If I may expect to collect what is due to me, after so many years.

  I’ve learned that you, the renowned Dr. K——, are one who has generously signed a “living will” donating his organs to those in need. Not for Dr. K—— an old-fashioned, selfish funeral and burial in a cemetery, nor even cremation. Good for you, Dr. K——! But I want only your heart, not your kidneys, liver, or eyes. These I will waive, that others more needy will benefit.

  Of course, I mean to make my application as others do, in medical situations similar to my own. I would not expect favoritism. The actual application would be made through my cardiologist. Caucasian female of youthful middle age, attractive, intelligent, optimistic though with a malfunctioning heart, otherwise in perfect health. No acknowledgment would be made of our old relationship, on my part at least. Though you, dear Dr. K——, as the potential heart donor, could indicate your own preference, surely?

  All this would transpire when you die, Dr. K——, I mean. Of course! Not a moment before.

  (I guess you might not be aware that you’re destined to die soon? Within the year? In a “tragic,” “freak” accident, as it will be called? In an “ironic,” “unspeakably ugly” end to a “brilliant career”? I’m sorry that I can’t be more specific about time, place, means; even whether you’ll die alone, or with a family member or two. But that’s the nature of accident, Dr. K——. It’s a surprise.)

  Dr. K——, don’t frown so! You’re a handsome man still, and still vain, despite your thinning gray hair, which, like other vain men with hair loss, you’ve taken to combing slantwise over the shiny dome of your head, imagining that since you can’t see this ploy in the mirror, it can’t be seen by others. But I can see.

  Fumbling, you turn to the last page of this letter to see my signature—“Angel”—and you’re forced to remember, suddenly . . . With a pang of guilt.

  Her! She’s still . . . alive?

  That’s right, Dr. K——! More alive now than ever.

  Naturally you’d come to imagine I had vanished. I had ceased to exist. Since you’d long ago ceased to think of me.

  You’re frightened. Your heart, that guilty organ, has begun to pound. At a second-floor window of your house on Richmond Street (expensively restored Victorian, pale gray shingles with dark blue trim, “quaint,” “dignified,” among others of its type in the exclusive old residential neighborhood east of the Theological Seminary), you stare out anxiously at—what?

  Not me, obviously. I’m not there.

  At any rate, I’m not in sight.

  Yet how the pale-glowering sky seems to throb with a sinister intensity! Like a great eye staring.

  Dr. K——, I mean you no harm! Truly. This letter is in no way a demand for your (posthumous) heart, nor even a “verbal threat.” If you decide, foolishly, to show it to the police, they will assure you it’s harmless, it isn’t illegal, it’s only a request for information: should I, the “love of your life” you have not seen in twenty-three years, apply to be the recipient of your heart? What are Angel’s chances?

  I only wish to collect what’s mine. What was promised to me, so long ago. I’ve been faithful to our love, Dr. K——!

  You laugh, harshly. Incredulously. How can you reply to Angel, when Angel has included no last name, and no address? You will have to seek me. To save yourself, seek me.

  You crumple this letter in your fist, throw it onto the floor.

  You walk away, stumble away, you mean to forget, obviously you can’t forget, the crumpled pages of my handwritten letter on the floor of—is it your study? on the second floor of the dignified old Victorian house at 119 Richmond Street?—where someone might discover them, and pick them up to read what you wouldn’t wish another living person to read, especially not someone “close” to you. (As if our families, especially our blood kin, are “close” to us as in the true intimacy of erotic love.) So naturally you return; with badly shaking fingers you pick up the scattered pages, smooth them out, and continue to read.

  Dear Dr. K——! Please understand: I am not bitter, I don’t harbor obsessions. That is not my nature. I have my own life, and I have even had a (moderately successful) career. I am a normal woman of my time and place. I am like the exquisite black-and-silver diamond-headed spider, the so-called happy spider, the sole subspecies of Araneidae that is said to be free to spin part-improvised webs, both oval and funnel, and to roam the world at will, equally at home in damp grasse
s and the dry, dark, protected interiors of manmade places; rejoicing in (relative) free will within the inevitable restrictions of Araneidae behavior; with a sharp venomous sting, sometimes lethal to human beings, especially to children.

  Like the diamond-head, I have many eyes. Like the diamond-head, I may be perceived as “happy,” “joyous,” “exulting,” in the eyes of others. For such is my role, my performance.

  It’s true, for years I was stoically reconciled to my loss, in fact to my losses. (Not that I blame you for these losses, Dr. K——. Though a neutral observer might conclude that my immune system has been damaged as a result of my physical and mental collapse following your abrupt dismissal of me from your life.) Then, last March, seeing your photograph in the paper—“Distinguished Theologian K—— to Head Seminary”—and, a few weeks later, when you were named to the President’s Commission on Religion and Bioethics, I reconsidered. The time of anonymity and silence is over, I thought. Why not try? Why not try to collect what he owes you?

  Do you remember Angel’s name now? That name that for twenty-three years, nine months, and eleven days you have not wished to utter?

  Seek my name in any telephone directory; you won’t find it. For possibly my number is unlisted; possibly I don’t have a telephone. Possibly my name has been changed. (Legally.) Possibly I live in a distant city in a distant region of the continent; or possibly, like the diamond-head spider (adult size approximately that of your right thumbnail, Dr. K——), I dwell quietly within your roof, spinning my exquisite webs amid the shadowy beams of your basement, or in a niche between your handsome old mahogany desk and the wall, or, a delicious thought, in the airless cave beneath the four-poster brass antique bed you and the second Mrs. K—— share in the doldrums of late middle age.

  So close am I, yet invisible!

  Dear Dr. K——! Once you marveled at my “flawless Vermeer” skin and “spun-gold” hair rippling down my back, which you stroked, and closed in your fist. Once I was your Angel, your “beloved.” I basked in your love, for I did not question it. I was young; I was virginal in spirit as well as body, and would not have questioned the word of a distinguished elder. And in the paroxysm of lovemaking, when you gave yourself up utterly to me, or so it seemed, how could you have . . . deceived?

  Dr. K—— of the Theological Seminary, biblical scholar and authority, protégé of Reinhold Niebuhr, and author of “brilliant,” “revolutionary” exegeses of the Dead Sea Scrolls, among other esoteric subjects.

  But I had no idea, you are protesting. I’d given her no reason to believe, to expect . . .

  (That I would believe your declarations of love? That I would take you at your word?)

  My darling, you have my heart. Always, forever. Your promise!

  These days, Dr. K——, my skin is no longer flawless. It has become the frank, flawed skin of a middle-aged woman who makes no effort to disguise her age. My hair, once shimmering strawberry-blond, is now faded, dry and brittle as broom sage; I keep it trimmed short, like a man’s, with scissors, scarcely glancing into a mirror as I snip! snip-snip! away. My face, though reasonably attractive, I suppose, is in fact a blur to most observers, including especially middle-aged American men; you’ve glanced at me, and through me, dear Dr. K——, upon more than one recent occasion, no more recognizing your Angel than you would have recognized a plate heaped with food you’d devoured twenty-three years ago with a zestful appetite, or an old, long-exhausted and dismissed sexual fantasy of adolescence.

  For the record: I was the woman in a plain, khaki-colored trench coat and matching hat who waited patiently at the university bookstore as a line of your admirers moved slowly forward for Dr. K—— to sign copies of The Ethical Life: Twenty-First-Century Challenges. (A slender theological treatise, not a mega-bestseller, of course, but a quite respectable bestseller, most popular in university and upscale suburban communities.) I knew your “brilliant” book would disappoint, yet I purchased it and eagerly read to discover (yet another time) the puzzling fact: you, Dr. K——, the man, are not the individual who appears in your books; the books are clever pretenses, artificial structures you’ve created to inhabit temporarily, as a crippled, deformed individual might inhabit a structure of surpassing beauty, gazing out its windows, taking pride in posing as its owner, but only temporarily.

  Yes? Isn’t this the clue to the renowned Dr. K——?

  For the record: several Sundays ago, you and I passed closely by each other in the State Museum of Natural History; you were gripping the hand of your five-year-old granddaughter (Lisle, I believe?—lovely name) and took no more notice of me than you’d have taken of any stranger passing you on the steep marble steps, descending from the Hall of Dinosaurs on the gloomy fourth floor as you were ascending; you’d stooped to speak smilingly to Lisle, and it was at that moment I noted the silly, touching ploy of your hair-combing (over the spreading bald spot), I saw Lisle’s sweet, startled face (for the child, unlike her myopic granddaddy, had seen me and knew me in a flash). I felt a thrill of triumph: for how easily I might have killed you then, I might have pushed you down those hard marble steps, my hands firm on your now rather rounded shoulders, the force of my rage overcoming any resistance you, a puffy, slack-bellied, two-hundred-pound man of late middle age, might have mustered; immediately you’d have been thrown off-balance, fallen backward, with an expression of incredulous terror, and, still gripping your granddaughter’s hand, you’d have dragged the innocent child backward with you, toppling down the marble steps with a scream: concussion, skull fracture, brain hemorrhage, death!

  Why not try, why not try to collect what he owes me.

  Of course, Dr. K——, I didn’t! Not that Sunday afternoon.

  Dear Dr. K——! Are you surprised to learn that your lost love with the “spun-gold” hair and the “soft-as-silk breasts” managed to recover from your cruelty and by the age of twenty-nine had begun to do well in her career, in another part of the country? Never would I be as renowned in my field as you, Dr. K——, are in yours—that goes without saying—but through diligence and industry, through self-deprivation and cunning, I made my way in a field traditionally dominated by men and achieved what might be called a minor, local success. That is, I have nothing to be ashamed of, and perhaps even something to be proud of, if I were capable of pride.

  I won’t be more specific, Dr. K——, but I will hint: my field is akin to yours, though not scholarly or intellectual. My salary is far less than yours, of course. I have no public identity, no reputation, and no great wish for such. I’m in a field of service, I’ve long known how to serve. Where the fantasies of others, primarily men, are involved, I’ve grown quite adept at serving.

  Yes, Dr. K——, it’s possible that I’ve even served you. Indirectly, I mean. For instance: I might work in or even oversee a medical laboratory to which your physician sends blood samples, biopsy tissue samples, et cetera, and one day he sends our laboratory a specimen extracted from the body of the renowned Dr. K——. Whose life may depend upon the accuracy and good faith of our laboratory findings.

  Just one example, Dr. K——, among many!

  No, dear Dr. K——, this letter is no threat. How, stating my position so openly, and therefore innocently, could I be a threat?

  Are you shocked to learn that a woman can be a professional—can have a career that’s fairly rewarding—yet still dream of justice after twenty-three years? Are you shocked to learn that a woman might be married, or might have been married, yet remain haunted still by her cruel, deceitful first love, who ravaged not only her virginity but her faith in humankind?

  You’d like to imagine your cast-off Angel as a lonely embittered spinster, yes? Hiding away in the dark, spinning ugly sticky webs out of her own poisonous guts. Yet the truth is the reverse: just as there are happy spiders, observed by entomologists as exhibiting a capacity for (relative) freedom, spinning webs of some variety and originality, so too there are happy women who dream of justice and will make sur
e that they taste its sweetness one day. Soon.

  (Dr. K——! How lucky you are to have a little granddaughter like Lisle! So delicate, so pretty, so . . . angelic. I have not had a daughter, I confess. I will not have a granddaughter. If things were otherwise between us, Jody, we might share Lisle.)

  Jody—what a thrill it was for me, at the age of nineteen, to call you by that name! Where others addressed you formally, as Dr. K——. That it was secret, illicit, taboo—like calling one’s own father by a lover’s name—was part of the thrill, of course.

  Jody, I hope your first, anxious wife, E——, never discovered certain bits of incriminating evidence in your trouser pockets, wallet, briefcase, where, daringly, I secreted them. Love notes, childlike in expression. Love love love my Jody. My BIG JODY.

  You’re not BIG JODY very often now, are you, Dr. K——?

  Jody has faded with the years, I’ve learned. With the thick wiry gypsy-black hair, those shrewd clear eyes and proud posture, and the capacity of your stubby penis to rejuvenate, reinvent itself with impressive frequency. (At the start of our affair, at least.) For any nineteen-year-old girl student to call you Jody now would be obscene, laughable.

  Now you most love being called Granddaddy! in Lisle’s voice.

  Yet in my dreams sometimes I hear my own shameless whisper: Jody, please don’t stop loving me, please forgive me, I want only to die, I deserve to die if you don’t love me, as in the warm bath blood-tendrils seeped from my clumsily lacerated forearms; but it was Dr. K——, not Jody, who spoke brusquely on the phone, informing me, This is not the time. Goodbye.

  (You must have made inquiries, Dr. K——. You must have learned that I was found there in the bloody bathwater, unconscious, nearing death, by a concerned woman friend who’d tried to call me. You must have known but prudently kept your distance, Dr. K——! These many years.)

  Dr. K——, not only have you managed to erase me from your memory, but I would guess you’ve forgotten your anxious, first wife, E——, Evie. The rich man’s daughter. A woman two years older than you, lacking in self-confidence, rather plain, with no style. Loving me, you were concerned about making Evie suspicious, not because you cared for her but because you would have made the rich father suspicious too. And you were very beholden to the rich father, yes? Few members of the seminary faculty can afford to live near the seminary. In the elegant old East End of our university town. (So you boasted in your bemused way. As if contemplating an irony of fate, not a consequence of your own maneuvering. As, smiling, you kissed my mouth, and drew a forefinger along my breasts, across my shivery belly.)