My Heart Laid Bare by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

relieved, for of course she had been, of course she’d even thanked God to be spared; yet at thesame time, hadn’t she felt . . . slighted? rather hurt? resentful? Knowing her husband a man of vigorous physical appetites, she had even tormented herself that Maynard might have looked elsewhere for that balm to which such manuals as The Wife’s Medical Companion referred to discreetly as “marital satisfaction.”
    She had told no one of this torment, of course. Even among the other Stirling wives, and her own married sisters, there were shamed subjects of which a woman could not speak.
    Seeing that Fanny was in a state of unpredictable emotions, Tyler told her he preferred to speak with the girl in private when she recovered sufficiently. He would make a financial arrangement with her; he would see that she signed a document legally binding her to silence. “A cash settlement. A fairly generous settlement. And nothing more—nothing for the future. No future contact. That must be agreed upon.” Fanny said, gazing across the room at the sleeping, now rather angelic-appearing girl, “And yet, if it’s Maynard’s child . . . We had hoped for a daughter, you know.” (Though, was this true? Fanny had hoped for a daughter, a third child; Maynard had seemed quite content with two strapping healthy sons.) “It’s like a fairy tale, the princess has come home. She is both the missing daughter and will give birth to the daughter. Oh, Tyler, do you see? Is it possible, this is God’s secret will ?”
    Tyler had never much respected his sister-in-law’s intellect and general character, though he had always liked the woman well enough, with some of the affectionate condescension he felt for his own mother and sisters; now, he sensed that Fanny was on the verge of another fit of female hysteria, and quickly comforted her by grasping her icy hands and assuring her that God’s will was simply that the Stirlings behave in a decent, Christian manner toward the girl—“Hardly that we martyr ourselves on her behalf, for that would only bring unhappiness and shame upon the entire family, including the Nederlanders.”
    Fanny shuddered. Fanny drained the little shot glass of the last of itsbrandy. Yes, it was so. Martyrdom was not for her, as it had been for her poor mother. “So long as we are generous, Tyler,” she said in a wistful voice.
8.
    The remainder of the afternoon and early evening were taken up with Tyler Stirling’s consultation with Miss Raumlicht, and his success, at last, in persuading her to sign a document of his devising in exchange for a “lump sum” of money.
    The exact amount, Fanny Stirling was never to know.
    Tyler had banished her upstairs, to bed with a blinding migraine.
    Tyler had set about the task of cleansing, as he irritably thought it, his elder brother’s soiled linen—“For which I will get no credit, since no one except Fanny will ever know. And even Fanny doesn’t know. ”
    For it wasn’t an easy task to persuade the little seamstress’s assistant to accept money from him “in the name of Maynard Stirling,” and to sign the document promising not to contact any member of the Stirling family ever again; Tyler was astonished at Mina Raumlicht’s stubborn virtue, so unlike any he had ever encountered in his experience as a lawyer. “She is impossible! Ridiculous! Yet so pretty, even in her condition, it’s clear why Maynard was taken with her.”
    Mina Raumlicht declared she did not want money. She did not wish to soil herself by accepting money. She had not come to Greenley Square to “sell her honor” but simply to see Mr. Stirling, her beloved Maynard, one final time; only out of desperation that he had not contacted her for the past eight days, where never before had he allowed more than three or four days to pass without sending her a message, or a