My Heart Laid Bare by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

as completely devastated as if an earthquake had struck Atlantic City, and the elegant Saint-Léon razed to the ground.
    And what glorious plans the lovers had had: to be married in the eyes of God, as soon as the divorce decree from old Mr. Peck was finalized; more immediately, to dine early on the twenty-third, and to attend a musical evening (the much acclaimed operetta The Fortune Teller ) at the new Gaiety Theatre.
    Grown fatigued by an afternoon of indolence on the beach, Mrs. Peck lay down in the sumptuous four-poster bed for a brief nap; slept fitfully; woke, and slept again, and woke, or seemed to . . . disturbed by raised voices in the adjacent room. “Christopher? Is that you?” she whispered. The voices ebbed, and she lay for a while in a pleasurable trance not knowing if she’d heard accurately or had been dreaming; lazily calculating whether it was too early for her to summon a maid, to draw her bathwater. The evening at the Gaiety would be festive and public, covert eyes moving upon her and Christopher, and so her toilette must be impeccable.
    Again the voices were raised: masculine voices. One of them was Christopher’s, unmistakably. But whose was the other?
    â€œMy dear boy, in an argument of some sort? Can it be?”
    Excited, thrilled, Eloise quickly wrapped herself in her new emerald-green crêpe de Chine robe; powdered her unfortunately puffy face; made an attempt to smooth down her matted hair. No time! no time! At the door she paused to listen, for Christopher did sound angry, as she’d never before heard him; and who could it be who dared to answer him in such a provocative tone? Not a hotel servant, surely?
    Eloise listened. Christopher was being threatened?
    Or, no: Christopher was threatening another person.
    . . . Another young voice, whining, childish, slurred with drink, a bullying intimacy; a brotherly tone alternating with one of crude malice.
    Money, evidently, was the issue.
    Someone was demanding money of her Christopher.
    And Christopher was saying in a lowered voice that there was no money to be had, damn it. No money to be had—yet.
    The other, unknown party laughed harshly, saying he didn’t intend to leave this damned hotel without some cash; no less than two hundred dollars. He was flat broke, his Baltimore plans had gone bust, he’d been lucky to have escaped with just a beating! . . .
    Eloise was shocked to hear how Christopher cursed his companion, and commanded him to leave at once before the woman overheard, and everything would be ruined.
    . . . two hundred did I say, shit three hundred’s what I meant.
    Christopher stammered there was no money to be had yet! . . . no money of any significance.
    The old bitch’s got jewels, don’t she? Come on. Before I lose my fuckin’ sand-frawd.
    In this way, recklessly, the two young men quarreled with an old, heated intimacy; even Christopher seemed to have forgotten where he was; and, on the other side of the door, Eloise Peck stood paralyzed, her pretty crêpe de Chine wrapper fallen open to reveal her sad, slack figure, and her eyes filling with tears in one of those intervals of horror that mimic, and sometimes augur, the termination of a life.
8.
    Here is how the catastrophe occurred.
    Christopher, as he was known to Mrs. Peck, had gone swimming, alone, in the late afternoon, along a stretch of windy deserted beach a quarter mile from the Saint-Léon; returned to the hotel suite, and since Mrs. Peck was asleep, enjoyed a cigar, and one or two small glasses of Swiss chocolate almond liqueur, out on the balcony overlooking the frothy, winking surf; was roused from his reverie by a surreptitious knocking at thedoor, at 5:25 P.M. , and giving no thought who it might be, suspecting it was one or another flunky of the Saint-Léon bringing Mrs. Peck some trifle she had ordered, went to open it; and saw to his astonishment his younger brother Harwood, in a disheveled state.
    Before