My Heart Laid Bare by Joyce Carol Oates Read Free Book Online

am scarcely myself of late & KNOW NOT WHO I AM SO craven in fear.
    Y r adoring Mina
    This brief message was written in midnight-blue ink in a large looping childlike hand, on a plain sheet of white stationery, the envelope postmarked “Innisfail, N.Y.”—a country village on the Nautauga River a short distance west of Contracoeur. But who was “Mina,” let alone “Y r adoring Mina”—?
    This mysterious and disturbing letter was delivered to the house in Greenley Square in the morning post, and opened by the distraught Mrs. Stirling in the late afternoon; read, and dazedly reread, if not fully comprehended, as she stood in her late husband’s rosewood-panelled library in the handsome, black-laced mourning dress she had been wearing most of the day, her veiled black hat not yet removed. Seeing that his sister-in-law had suddenly stiffened, with an expression of baffled fright, Tyler Stirling, Maynard’s younger brother, quickly approached her to inquire what the letter was; yet even as Fanny Stirling stammered anxiously that she did not know what the letter was , Tyler drew it discreetly from her tremblingfingers. With a rapid, practiced eye he scanned the offensive note, betraying no surprise or upset or incredulity; and, acting with the judicious calm for which the Stirling men were known, he folded the sheet of paper and slipped it into his inside coat pocket for safekeeping. (With similar composure Maynard Stirling had once received a note in court informing him of the birth of his son Warren, just as he was about to address a jury on behalf of his client, the plaintiff in a bitter lawsuit: betraying no hint of emotion, the attorney proceeded with his usual vigor and confidence, winning the case for his client.)
    â€œWhat is the letter? Who is—‘Mina’? How dare a stranger speak with such intimacy, to—Maynard?” Fanny Stirling asked anxiously, and Tyler said, as if concluding an argument, “The letter was incorrectly addressed, and misdelivered. I suggest that you banish it from your thoughts, Fanny, at once.”
4.
    Yet what a riddle it was, and how it tormented her: Y r adoring Mina of Innisfail.
    In the midst of her grief, Fanny Stirling’s thoughts seized upon that childlike message, which Tyler had taken from her, and of which he would not speak. Nor did anyone else in the family know of it. It is an omen. An evil omen. God help me! The shock of Maynard’s death had rendered Fanny nearly incapable of coherent thought and speech; her doctor had prescribed liberal dosages of “nerve medicine” which left her groggy and disoriented, as if struggling to retain consciousness in the midst of a dream; and what a battalion of Stirling in-laws, relatives, friends and social, business and political acquaintances the family had to contend with—! Even as her sons Warren and Felix believed they were comforting her, Fanny felt obliged to comfort them; this was the case with Maynard’s elderly mother and aunts as well, who had adored him. The widow knew herself closely observed by female acquaintances in Contracoeur, and worried that she was being found wanting in certain particulars: the horror of Death had gradually becomeobscured by the more immediate anxiety that Fanny was inadequate to the social demands of her position. Fanny Stirling was one of those well-to-do but insecure society women who agonize more about being talked about behind their back than about even illness or death.
    Fanny Stirling, née Nederlander, a daughter of the barrel-manufacturing family of Buffalo, New York, was a girl of fifty at the time of her husband’s unexpected death. Her personality was girlish, rather than womanly; her mannerisms—a way of ducking her head, a way of smiling, a way of fluttering her fingers in conversation—were meant to suggest girlhood, and not maturity; for the Stirling men had not admired, in women, forcefulness of