A Fall of Marigolds (25 page)

I turned the envelope over and opened its ancient flap. Several sheets of writing paper were tucked inside, crisp with age. I opened them carefully.

November 16, 1911

Dearest Eleanor,

I shall miss saying good-bye to you, as my train leaves for Liverpool early in the morning and you are not expected back until nightfall. It has been my pleasure getting to work alongside you these last six weeks.

I have tendered my resignation and am going back home to America. It had been my intention to stay for the entire year, but my heart is not here, as I am sure you must have guessed; it is back home with someone who loves me and whom I know now I love in return. Dr. Bartlett has been most kind to allow me to go. He can find another nurse, he told me, but I cannot find another heart. He understands, bless him, because he so dearly loves Mrs. Bartlett.

My dear Eleanor, I leave you knowing you are in a place of great distress. You loved Wesley with all your heart, and now he loves someone else. Perhaps you are thinking, as I once did, that love is too precarious to want to lavish it again on another. I want you to know that love is not a person. It is not of this earth at all. It wasn’t until now that I realized I had mistakenly come to believe that love came from a place inside me and therefore I had to protect that place. It comes from heaven, Eleanor. It is given to us not to hold on to or hide from, but to give away.

I want you to have the scarf that you found with this letter to remind you of this. The scarf came to me twice, in the most amazing of ways. I was meant to have it, just as I believe that you are meant to have it now.

This scarf was given first to a woman named Lily by a mother who loved her. Life sent Lily to the valley of decision, just as it sends all of us there from time to time. She made difficult choices based on despair. If I have learned anything this past year, it is that despair is love’s fiercest enemy.

Do not choose to abandon love because you are afraid that it will crush you. Love is the only true constant in a fragile world.

Don’t despair. Be happy. Choose hope.

Yours, Clara

For several seconds I could only stare at a letter that seemed to have been written to me, and not to a Scottish maid a century before.

“I can see why my aunt kept that letter, can’t you?” Mrs. Stauer squeezed my forearm.

I nodded. “Yes, I can.”

“She did love again, by the way. She and my uncle Steven were married fifty-nine years.”

I smiled and slipped the ancient pages back inside the envelope. “I’m really glad to hear that. Thank you for this.”

I hailed a cab and helped her into it.

Mrs. Stauer patted the purse on her lap. “That’s a lovely saying you have on your business card, Taryn. I’d forgotten that was your store’s motto. ‘Everything beautiful has a story it wants to tell.’ It’s very lovely.”

I smiled. “I think so, too.”

“You will give your daughter a hug from me, won’t you?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said, and bent to kiss her cheek before closing the cab door.

I watched the taxi until it disappeared into the steady stream of Saturday traffic. Moments later, a red MINI Cooper sidled up to the row of parked cars ahead of me and Kendal stepped out. I heard her thank Melissa’s mother and then she closed the car door. I waved from where I stood and the MINI Cooper beeped a response.

Kendal walked toward me, hiking her backpack onto her shoulder.

“Hi,” I said. “Have a good time?”

“Yes, but Melissa’s brother . . . Hey! Is that the scarf you had in the photo?” Kendal pointed to the marigolds cascading over my arm. And I knew the scarf would pass from me to my daughter that very day. I didn’t need it any longer. I had made my peace with destiny. Kendal, on the other hand, was just beginning to understand that the freedom to love and be loved, though it shook you to your core, made life exquisite.

“Yes, it is,” I said.

“But . . . where was it all this time?”

I slid my other arm around her and pulled her close. “Now, that is a long story, and I’d like to tell it to you.”

O
DE ON
A G
RECIAN
U
RN

John Keats

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,

For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,

A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea-shore,

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell

Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede

Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I
strive to be as accurate as possible when I create an imagined story in a historic place and to carefully choose when to use literary license to bend fact. I have in these pages proposed how one nurse might have experienced Ellis Island Hospital in the second half of 1911. While physicians in 1911 would have been Marine Hospital Service Commissioned Corps officers, nurses would not. Between the years 1930 and 1944 the Commissioned Corps was expanded to include dentists, nurses, and other health care specialists, as well as physicians.

The eight so-called measles wards on island three were in fact buildings where immigrants with any number of diseases were cared for, including those with scarlet fever. I chose to place Andrew Gwynn at Ward K, one of the isolation wards at the farthest end of the island, because I wanted him to be at the island’s edge and secluded. This location suited the story.

Any deviations from actual history were made for sake of story, or imperfect conjecture on my part.

I am donating a portion of the royalties from the sale of
A Fall of Marigolds
to the Save Ellis Island foundation for the much-needed restoration of the hospital buildings on islands two and three. You can learn more about this important project at http://saveellisisland.org. I encourage you to join me in supporting this timely effort.

—Susan Meissner

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I
am enormously grateful to . . .

Everyone at NAL and Penguin, especially my insightful editor, Ellen Edwards, for knowing exactly what I needed to do to take this story where I wanted it to go.

Chip MacGregor, for tenacious encouragement from the very moment I mentioned I had an idea for a novel set on Ellis Island, and for countless words of affirmation in the years you have been my agent and friend.

Gifted and generous Ellis Island Hospital experts: Janis Calella, president of Save Ellis Island, Inc.; eloquent Lorie Conway, author and producer of the documentary
Forgotten Ellis Island
; historian, librarian, and author Barry Moreno of the National Park Service; and historian Rear Admiral Arthur J. Lawrence, assistant surgeon general, USPHS (ret.). For your kind and thorough responses to my many inquiries, I am profoundly thankful. I am also grateful for the tremendous research done by National Park Service historian Harlan D. Unrau.

Early readers Judy Horning, Debbie Ness, Barbara Anderson, and especially K. C. Wilt for much-appreciated feedback.

Dear friends and virtual watercooler coworkers Mary DeMuth, Tosca Lee, Ariel Lawhon, Marybeth Whalen, Jenny B. Jones, Nicole Baart, and Jennifer Lyn King, for being sounding boards, a cheering section, and a support group all in one. And Davis Bunn, for sharing with me your memories of being in Lower Manhattan on 9/11.

Siri Mitchell for translating the French phrases; quilting maven and lifelong friend Kathy Sanders for inspiring me to imagine the Heirloom Yard; and Nicole Shepard for showing me the beauty and bravado of Manhattan.

The survivors of 9/11 who bravely shared their stories, their wounds, their hopes. I am awed by your resilience.

My parents, Bill and Judy Horning; my husband, Bob; and our adult children, Stephanie, Josh, Justin, and Eric, for believing in me.

God, for bestowing on all of us the freedom to love and be loved.

A native of San Diego,
Susan Meissner
is a former managing editor of a weekly newspaper and an award-winning columnist. She has published fourteen novels with Harvest House and WaterBook, a division of Random House. She lives in San Diego with her husband and has four grown children.

A CONVERSATION WITH

SUSAN MEISSNER

Q. What inspired you to write
A Fall of Marigolds
?

A. A couple years ago I viewed Lorie Conway’s compelling documentary film
Forgotten Ellis Island
, about the history and former glory of the now crumbling Ellis Island Hospital. I was transfixed by the haunting images, because unlike the immigration station on the main part of Ellis Island, the hospital buildings have yet to be restored. I knew there had to be thousands of stories pressed into those empty halls and forsaken rooms, and I wanted to imagine what one of them might have been. I considered writing a story about an immigrant woman who, arriving ill to America, is sent to Ellis’s hospital and is suddenly stuck in between the life she left and the life that awaits her. But as I toyed with ideas, I began to see that my main character was instead a nurse, stationed at the hospital by choice. She is desperate for a place to hover, where time can stand still. I pictured her as having survived something terrible and needing the odd space between what was and what will be, to come to grips with what had happened to her. Ellis Island Hospital was the perfect place for her, because it was a place where people waited for their situation to change. When I decided this nurse would be a survivor of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire, I knew the contemporary story that would frame the historical one would involve a survivor from 9/11.

Q. Although this is your first novel with New American Library, you’ve written many other novels. How does
A Fall of Marigolds
compare to them?

A. In my last five books, I’ve dovetailed a contemporary story around a historical subplot or vice versa. I like mulling over how the past informs the present. History shows us what we value, what we fear, what we are willing to fight for, and what we don’t want to live without. When two separate and perhaps even unrelated story lines revolve around the same theme, we can see that there are aspects about us that don’t change, even though the years change. I also like to incorporate into my novels a physical element of some kind that appears in both time periods: a tangible tie that loops the two stories together. In
The Shape of Mercy
, I used a diary. In
Lady in Waiting
it was a ring. In
A Sound Among the Trees
it was a house. And in
A Fall of Marigolds
the item that links both stories is the scarf.

Q. I was particularly fascinated by the ethical dilemma that lies at the heart of Clara Wood’s story. I so rarely see such situations explored in fiction. What inspired you to include it, and have you explored similar situations in your previous fiction?

A. The best novels I’ve read have made me ponder what I would do if I were that character on that quest with those kinds of odds against me. The more difficult the choices a character must make, the more emotionally invested I become as a reader. Ethical dilemmas suggest the most challenging choices, because someone must decide what is right and wrong, and then they must live with the consequences. That kind of scenario nearly always creates tension, and tension creates interest. I admit it’s my goal to craft stories that are memorable, that are hard to put down, that keep you up at night, that make you want to talk with your book club friends, and that resonate with you long after you’ve moved on to another book. I want people to like my books not only because they were entertained, but also because they discovered things about themselves that they didn’t already know.

Q. What do you hope that readers will take away from reading
A Fall of Marigolds
?

A. I really do believe that the capacity to love is what gives meaning to our lives, even though we are never more vulnerable than when we let down our guard and trust our hearts to others. The world isn’t perfect; nor are other people. It’s quite possible that loving flawed people in an equally flawed world is going to subject you to the worst kind of heartache. But I like to think that the heart is capable of surviving the costs of loving because it was meant to. The heart is made of muscle; we are meant to exercise it. This is what Taryn and Clara come to realize. It seems to me the best kind of takeaway I could hope for.

Q. Can you tell us a bit about how you first became a writer? Are there people or other writers who have particularly inspired and encouraged you?

A. I usually answer this question with: It wasn’t so much that I became a writer as that I realized I already was one. According to my mother, I was composing poems aloud when I was four, before I knew how to scribble all the letters of the alphabet. I’ve always been driven to process what I see happening around me by writing about it. I am grateful to two teachers for seeing that I was wired this way, even before I knew it myself: my second-grade teacher, Virginia Work, who gave me a little red journal to write my stories in—it was years before I realized this was something she did for me only, not for everybody in the classroom; and my ninth-grade English teacher, Frank Barone, who told me with complete confidence that I would be published someday. I can’t adequately express how much that early affirmation means to me, even all these many decades later. I salute all teachers who make the effort to water and tend the seedling talents of their young students. I don’t know that I would have had the confidence to attempt writing my first novel without that early encouragement.

Q. Would you share something about your writing process? How do you tackle such a daunting project as writing a novel?

A. I need to see that pivotal, climactic scene in my head before I can start on page one. I have many writing friends who write by the seat of their pants, and who can confidently start a novel without knowing how the story will end, or how they will get there. I must be able to visualize how the story will progress—from the scene in the beginning when the story quest becomes evident, to the middle scenes that ratchet up the tension, to the dark moment when all seems lost, to the final summit when the quest is at its zenith. I need to know why my character wants what she wants and why that matters to anyone reading her story. All that is to say that I create an outline before I start. I don’t always know what every big transitional moment will be when I’m first starting to write the outline, but I do know where those key moments need to fall. When I am outlining my plot, scene by scene, I may just write, “Something big happens here,” at a point of major escalation, just so I will be anticipating it as I write. I call this outlining by the seat of my pants.

Q. What do you most enjoy about being a writer? What do you find most onerous?

A. I heartily enjoy the creative process of imagining something out of nothing, even though that is also the very thing that makes writing fiction so hard. I started writing professionally as a reporter for a small-town newspaper and eventually became an editor, so I had ten years of nonfiction writing experience before I tried my hand at my first novel. A blank page with no parameters was what scared me most—and still does. Back in my newspaper days, when I wrote a feature story about an avid butterfly collector or a Bataan Death March survivor or a female hog farmer, I didn’t have to do anything special to make those people seem real to my readers. But with novels, I am creating—out of thin air—characters who have no biography unless I imagine one for them. If I can’t make those characters seem real to you, you won’t care about them, and if you don’t care about them, you’ll put the book down. It’s a delicious challenge that sometimes gives me heartburn.

Q. Do you belong to a book club?

A. For the last five years I have been in a book club with the most amazingly astute and insightful women. We have a long list of across-the-board favorite books, including
The Thirteenth Tale
by Diane Setterfield,
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
by Lisa See,
The Help
by Kathryn Stockett,
Molokai
by Alan Brennert,
The Language of Flowers
by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, and
People of the Book
by Geraldine Brooks. We usually pair our monthly meeting with a lunch menu to match the book. As I am writing this, the last novel we read was
The Age of Miracles
by Karen Thompson Walker, and we had at lunch, among other dishes, End of the World Chocolate Cake—which was, of course, to die for.

Q. What’s next for you? Do you have any long-term goals as a writer?

A. I am in the middle of researching the London Blitz and pulling on different story threads. As a mother, my heart has always felt a tug when I consider how hard it must have been for parents to put their children on trains and send them out of the city before the bombing began. I can’t help but think that for every child and every mother, there was a story to tell. The Londoners who lived through the Blitz were ordinary people—merchants, teachers, chefs, writers—but they found themselves on the strangest of battlefields, armed with nothing but blackout curtains. They were people just like you and me. I am plotting a story in which a London mother sends her daughters to the countryside, but something happens, and the two sisters become separated. Seventy years later, an American college student studying abroad interviews the older sister, who up to that point has never told anyone what happened the day her younger sister disappeared, the same day the Luftwaffe began to bomb London.

My long-term goal is to write something worthy of being remembered, something that breaks new ground or rises above mere entertainment. I can’t imagine ever retiring from writing. Perhaps I will have to slow down a little, but I see myself in my twilight years tapping out stories from a sunny corner in a pleasantly appointed assisted-living facility, which I hope very much has a view of the ocean.