Give Me Your Heart Read Free

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.)
    Poor Evie! Her hit-and-run “accidental” death, a mysterious vehicle swerving on a rain-lashed pavement, no witnesses . . . I would have helped you mourn, Dr. K——, and been a
loving step-mother to your children, but by then you’d banished me from your life.
    Or so you believed.
    (For the record: I am not hinting that I had anything to do with the death of the first Mrs. K——. Don’t bother to read and reread these lines to determine if there’s something
“between” them. There isn’t.)
    And then, Dr. K——, a widower with two children, you went away, to Germany. A sabbatical year that stretched into two. I was left to mourn in your place. (Not luckless Evie, but you.) Your
wife’s death was spoken of as a “tragedy” in certain circles, but I preferred to think of it as purely an accident: a conjunction of time, place, opportunity. What is accident
but a precision of timing?
    Dr. K——, I would not accuse you of blatant hypocrisy (would I?), still less of deceit, but I can’t comprehend why, in such craven terror of your first wife’s family (to whom you felt so intellectually superior), you nonetheless remarried,
within eighteen months, a woman much younger than you, nearly as young as I, which must have shocked and infuriated your former in-laws. Yes? (Or did you cease caring about what they thought? Had
you siphoned enough money from the father-in-law by that time?)
    Your second wife, V——, would be spared an accidental death, and will survive you by many years. I have never felt any rancor for voluptuous—now rather fattish—Viola, who came
into your life after I’d departed from it. Maybe, in a way, I felt some sympathy for the young woman, guessing that in time you would betray her too. (And haven’t you? Numberless
times?)
    I have forgotten nothing, Dr. K ——. While you, to your fatal disadvantage, have forgotten almost everything.
    Dr. K——, Jody shall I confess: I had secrets from you even then. Even when I seemed to you transparent, translucent. Deep in the marrow of my bones, a wish to bring our illicit love to an
end. An end worthy of grand opera, not mere melodrama. When you sat me on your knees naked—“nude” was your preferred term—and gobbled me up with your
eyes—“Beautiful! Aren’t you a little beauty!”—even then I exulted in my secret thoughts. You seemed at times drunk with love—lust?—for me, kissing,
tonguing, nuzzling, sucking . . . sucking nourishment from me like a vampire. (The stress of fatherhood and maintaining a dutiful-son-in-law pose as well as the “renowned theologian”
were exhausting you, maddening you in your masculine vanity. Of course, in my naiveté I had no idea.) Yet laying my hand on the hot-skinned nape of your neck I saw a razor blade clenched in
my fingers, and the first astonished spurts of your blood, with such vividness that I can see it now. I began to faint, my eyes rolled back in my head, you caught me in your arms . . . and for the
first time (I assume it was the first time) you perceived your spun-gold angel as something of a concern, a liability, a burden not unlike the burden of a neurotic, anxiety-prone wife. Darling,
what’s the matter with you? Are you playing, darling? Beautiful girl, it isn’t amusing to frighten me when I