May the Road Rise Up to Meet You: A Novel (48 page)

Marcella would later shed more than a few tears to hear how the whole thing had been arranged, how Ethan’s Mam and Aunt Em had visited Mrs. Carlisle’s just the day after she and Ethan had returned so they could start making plans … and how Sean—Seanny, as she promised to call him before the evening was through—had insisted upon arranging all the carriages for Mrs. Carlisle and Catherine and the ladies from the Abolition Society … and how Uncle Paddy, who she had learned was Aunt Emily’s second husband, had arranged for a special ferry just to take them back and forth … and the food from the Clinton Hotel … and Feeny closing the pub altogether that night, just so he could be here to administer the spirits by way of a tribute to his son who had fallen at Fredericksburg along with all the rest of the lads … and the music, a virtual symphony of fiddles and hand drums and even
a piano brought into the parlor … with voices loud and mostly on key—and oh!—it was as if she’d arrived in a foreign country altogether!

Then in the late evening hours, after the guests had almost all gone home, she was summoned by Mam and Aunt Em to accompany them to the front stoop, where Violet Smythe was already seated. Marcella sat along the ledge of the top step and listened to the clanking of chairs and dishes and glasses inside, where the men, including Sean and Smitty, seemed quite busy.

“What are they doing?” she whispered to Aunt Em.

And Aunt Em laughed a little before answering, “Well of course, they’re doin’ the cleanin’ up!”

She tried to imagine her father and brothers doing anything of the sort, then laughed out loud at the idea.

“What is it dear?” Ethan’s Mam asked her.

“It’s just … well … in my father’s house the men don’t do much cleaning—or anything, really.”

“Ah sure, they don’t here either,” she laughed.

“ ’Tisn’t anything more than the chance to sneak in an extra pint before callin’ it an evenin’,” Aunt Emily added.

“Cigars and brandy,” Marcella said with a smile.

And almost as soon as she’d said these things—allowing herself to be too comfortable amongst these women she was still getting to know after just a few days of living here—she wished she could have the words back.

Catherine had pulled her aside early on and told her that the McOwens had so dearly wanted to invite her family and all her friends to celebrate their marriage, but having no addresses other than Mrs. Carlisle’s, they came to call on her first. Mrs. Carlisle had discreetly suggested that a
family
gathering might best wait for a future date, but that there were several dear friends of Marcella’s who would no doubt be happy to attend, and Marcella felt more beholden to Mrs. Carlisle than ever before. Still, the disparity in guests from each respective side of this new union had lent itself to a few awkward moments for her. Friends far enough along the periphery of the McOwen side of things had asked Marcella where her family lived in Spain—meaning it in the present tense—and it was only thanks to Ethan or Catherine or Mrs.
Carlisle being beside her at each of these occasions, that she had managed to make it through the evening without having to tell anyone that her family had been living just across the East River for going on eleven years, and wouldn’t dream of coming to a party such as this, even if she
were
in their good graces.

But here on the front stoop, with the guests all gone, there would be no escaping the full disclosure of things, and it was her own fault for having opened the door to it all. Marcella was unusually reserved after the slip.

“How’s that, love?” Ethan’s Mam asked.

And Marcella looked at her, hoping for a way to avoid the inevitable.

“You were sayin’ cigars an’ brandy an’—I wasn’t quite followin’ ya—did ya want some brandy? I don’t know if we’ve got—”

“Oh no, Mrs. McOwen. It’s just that in my father’s house, the men would slip off at the end of the evening, too—only into the library for cigars and brandy after the supper, and the women would be left in the parlor.”

Then she thought of all that Ethan had said of their time in the Old Country, and how they all had worked for an aristocratic family called the Brodericks. And at that moment her heart sank to think that they might count her as one of that class—until Aunt Emily broke the brief silence.

“Well, it looks like we got the better o’ that arrangement then,” she said. “At least they do a pretty good job with th’cleanin’ up. And it’s only fer the cost of a pint.”

“Could you imagine that lot drinking brandy?” Violet asked.

And they
all
laughed, Marcella even.

Then almost on cue came Ethan’s Uncle Paddy booming out the first line of a song, with the rest of the men inside joining up for the second:

And the women spoke in a songlike manner of their own.

“Oh Jaysus, there dey go,” Aunt Emily said. “Four bleedin’ Irishmen—”

“And a bleedin’ Scot,” Violet added.

“And not a one of ’em who can sing on key,” Mam said.

And Marcella, feeling a little more at home with these women now, offered the finishing touch.

“What are the odds of that?” she said.

Violet laughed straightaway, but Aunt Emily and Mam looked at each other with wide eyes first before smiling and joining in.

“Ahh, Mahrcella dear,” Mam said, touching her knee, “sure it’ll be nice to have ya ’round.”

“Amen to that!” Aunt Emily added, opening the front door and waiting for a break between verses to call inside to the men, “Mind the neighbors! Sure they’ve got ears that have to listen to ya, too!”

“And the dogs as well, poor creatures,” Violet said.

And they laughed and listened to the men sing the next verse more quietly, though
far
more noticeably off key, without being able to mask their musical inadequacies now by shouting. The four ladies looked at each other, cringing and shaking their heads.

“Just how important
are
the neighbors to you?” Marcella asked.

And they laughed in unison this time.

“Sure, you’ll fit right in here, love,” Aunt Emily said.

And on a night she wanted to spend with her husband and not the memory of her grandmother at all, she felt compelled to write just a few words all the same.

She opens the familiar sheet music for only the second or third time since they’ve been here, and spreads it out across the display, and he considers it a small miracle that he’s somehow stumbled his way up the front steps undetected, to see her there, unfettered by news of the world outside, and looking like the Venus de Milo—if ever the Venus de Milo had long black hair and arms, such arms, with graceful fingers at the end of them to play the piano. And then, with her still not knowing he’s there, or choosing not to let on, she places her fingers on the opening chords and plays without hesitation.

She bobbles slightly at the first key change, and he has to smile, thinking of how she’d done the same thing when she played with Mrs. Templeton. But then she backs up and plays over the key change again, and a third time, and then the fourth sounds just right, and she allows herself a little smile while playing on, coasting through three minutes’ worth of fondest memories. And he stands there taking in the music, certain that she’s aware of his presence the way she exaggerates playing some of the bolder chords, and lifts her hands far off the keys in long draping lines accentuated by downward pointed fingers. So it’s more of the dance that it has always been between them, and he’s glad the day can at least begin this way, and the world outside can be put off for a few moments more.

Now
that
time sounded perfect, he says once she’s finished, and he walks through the partly opened front door.

She turns around on the piano bench and pulls the blanket up from her hips and back over her shoulders, smiling easily at him, confirming that she’d been aware of his presence all along.

I still need to work on that first key change, she says. How was the lake?

Beautiful, but tomorrow I think …

And she offers an exaggerated frown at the mention of another day of waking up to find him gone from their bed.

 … well,
next
time I go, I’ll take pictures of the sunrise—and perhaps
Mrs
. McOwen will accompany me for a morning picnic?

She smiles, then asks, a
late
morning picnic?

Well, I s’pose the sun’ll just have to wait until Mrs. McOwen is ready to watch it rise, he says, and she smiles her best Cleopatra sort of approval at the handling of such trivial details.

He sits down beside her on the piano bench and she opens the blanket to allow him to slip inside it. His left arm slides around her waist and they share the same long, slow, breathless kiss that has become the morning custom.

Ooh … you need a shave, she says, breaking away for just a moment before returning.

And then, as if satisfied that he’s made up for his absence that morning, and the effrontery of thinking a flower and a note could serve as a replacement, she pulls her lips from his and stares at him with an interrogating gaze. He knows that the folded newspaper protruding from his pocket is a violation of their agreement, but the outside world seems ever more determined to find its way to Cooperstown, to this house even, and what has seemed an Eden-like interlude compared to the rest of their brief marriage. And she slips her hand down his shoulder and lifts the newspaper slowly, staring at him in an accusing manner.

You just couldn’t resist, could you, she says.

And he knows he’s got to tell her then.

I passed the Stimsons’ store on my way back, he confesses, and Olivia was by the door talking with a few other people—and she called me over.

And she
insisted
you buy a copy of
The Freeman’s Journal
! Marcella jokes, but her smile doesn’t linger once she sees the more serious look on Ethan’s face.

Gettysburg … it was more terrible than Fredericksburg … than Antietam even. The Rebs’ve gone back south, it looks, but it was bad.

Oh God, Henry Stimson came by not half an hour ago with a telegram for us, she says. I didn’t read it—I didn’t think it was … it’s on the mantel over there.

She’s up from the bench and at the mantel, then carrying the small folded paper reluctantly back to him. And as soon as she says it’s from Seanny, Ethan knows what it says.

You read it, he says with a nod.

She opens the fold, and soon as her eyes take in the words on the paper, her hand goes involuntarily to cover her mouth. Dropping the hand with the telegram in it down to her side as if wanting to get it away from her sight, she turns her head slightly with saddened eyes reaching out to him.

Ethan, she whispers. Harry’s dead … Gettysburg … the second day.

And as the news hits him, his thoughts seem strangely transported back to Fredericksburg, to the hospital on Stafford Heights, where they fell in love amidst such violently shifting emotions, a tiny oasis of tenderness draped in the misery of every day. Only now it was the reverse, these past six weeks of glorious refuge pierced by the mournful news from far off, the two experiences like photographic negatives, light as dark and dark as light. But it’s not a description worth explaining when there is his wife’s tender embrace for consolation.

It was Mrs. Carlisle who was primarily responsible for these past glorious weeks, since it was her home they were in after all, and she’d insisted that they’d be doing her a great favor by getting some use of the place for the first time in years. Marcella had taken to it straightaway, delighted by the scenery and the solitude. When they wanted for company, there was Mrs. Carlisle’s cousin Olivia Stimson, and her husband, Henry, and stories of the Underground Railroad days. And Ethan enjoyed the place for all these reasons, too.

But it had become something more to him than it was even for Marcella. There were far too many trees, and the afternoons grew far too warm for it to remind him very much of the days back on the Lane. And yet he found these to be most welcome additions. Henry Stimson told him to use the rowboat whenever he pleased, and Ethan would fish sometimes on Lake Otsego for as long as he could stand to be away from Marcella, sometimes for two or three hours even. But mostly
they’d take it out midday, drifting with whatever tiny current the wind wanted to create, and he’d sometimes read to her, or she to him. And such moments had stripped away so much of the previous months, allowing them to know each other without the march of history pressing at their backs. For him, it was the refuge of feeling that he could somehow protect her, ensure her happiness, like he’d never been able to do with Aislinn and Mam and Aunt Em.

And when Marcella wrote to Mrs. Carlisle how much they loved the place and how grateful they were for the use of it, Mrs. Carlisle replied with a lengthy letter telling Marcella that it was hers now. It turned out that she had planned to leave it to Marcella all along and leave the New York house to Catherine—her only children, as Mrs. Carlisle described it. And Marcella, much to Ethan’s surprise, seemed rather easily convinced that she should not bother to protest the matter.