Mrs. Poe (28 page)

“Hmm,” Eliza murmured, sewing.

“It is interesting, isn’t it? I would love to take you to see them, my dear. The vicar is a very good friend—I’m sure I could get him to give us a tour.”

Eliza gave him a wincing smile. “Thank you for the offer.”

“Nothing would make me happier, good lady.” He turned his back more squarely against me. “Perhaps we could work in a luncheon at Delmonico’s. Lorenzo Delmonico is a very dear friend of mine—I think I might get him to whip us up a very nice Charlotte Russe.”

I could not bear my inability to speak to Mr. Poe, just across the room, when I desired him so much. I jumped up. “You will all excuse me?”

Reverend Griswold crossed his arms in satisfaction. “Oh.
You
would like to go to Delmonico’s, too?”

I nodded at him and the Bartletts. “Good-bye.”

When Eliza saw that I was heading toward the hall, she said, “It’s awfully hot outside, Fanny.”

“Just a quick errand.” With a flick of a glance at Mr. Poe, I fled.

As briskly as the sultry summer evening air would allow, I walked to the Baptist church, willing Mr. Poe to come to me.
Please hurry, Edgar. How I need you. I must have your lips kissing mine.

I let myself through the iron gate of the churchyard. The sun was bronzing the heavens and everything it touched as it sank, pouring a molten golden glow upon the tombstones, the trees, and the heat-withered grass crunching under my feet. I was reading the names carved on the glowing stones when I heard a snap behind a nearby screen of cedars.

I paused, listening. Beyond the spiked rails of the churchyard fence, horses clopped down Mercer Street. Blackbirds whistled unseen. The leaves of the graveyard trees hissed in the scorched evening breeze.

There: Another snap.

I knew I should leave. It felt wrong there, strangely threatening. The animal in me smelled danger.

Perversely, I had to see.

I eased around the cedars.

A girl in white was sitting on a headstone.

She turned around.

“Mrs. Poe?” I gasped.

She coughed and waved the broken stick she’d been holding as in a greeting. When she caught her breath, she said, “I knew that you’d come.”

“Well.” I patted my throat. “What a surprise. I don’t often find my friends in a graveyard.”

She raised one corner of her pretty mouth. “I’m glad that you think of me as a friend.”

She would have had to pass the Bartletts’ to get here. Did she know that her husband was in their house? It was odd that I had not seen her since she had moved so close. Mr. Poe would not speak of her, nor did I press him beyond polite inquiries about her health. I was afraid to know the extent of her illness.

My mind raced for pleasant conversation. “Such a hot evening.”

She tossed away the stick. “I’m dying, Mrs. Osgood.”

I felt the blow she meant to deliver.

“That’s why he’s turning from me.” Like a child in a nursery chair, she kicked her feet against the tombstone upon which she sat. “Eddie’s afraid to be alone.”

“You’re young and strong. You have decades left.”

My words glanced off her, unheeded. “I’m his other half. I’m the William Wilson that he cannot shake. What will he do without me to be bad, so that he can be so very good?”

She had come unhinged. I must remain calm. “ ‘William Wilson’ was just a story.”

“Is that what he told you?”

I swallowed.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going just yet. Not without a fight.”

“I don’t want you to go anywhere.”

She coughed against the back of her hand. “I’ve got consumption. My lungs are shutting down.”

“It’s just bronchitis—your husband said.”

She laughed. “If it helps you to believe that, go ahead.”

I backed away slowly, as one does from a dog that is ready to bite. “Truly, Mrs. Poe, I wish only the best for you.”

“Liar.”

She hopped down from the headstone, setting off a fit of coughing.

I heard the crackling of dry grass behind me. Someone was coming. We stared at each other, deadlocked.

Mr. Poe came around the hedge. When he saw his wife, he shuddered with revulsion.

“Virginia! How did you get here?”

“I walked. Mother helped me. We were going to Washington Square but this was as far as I could go. She went back to get her knitting.”

If she had meant to go to the park, she could have gotten there faster by walking the other direction down our street.

“You should be in bed.”

“I like it here.” She spread out her arms as if to embrace the tombstones. “I feel so much closer to these people than to the living.”

“Don’t be a fool.” He frowned at her. “You’re shivering.”

He saw my scowl, demanding that he care for her. He put his arm around her.

“I shall let you two be alone.” I turned, my hem catching on the sere and crispéd grass.

“Mrs. Osgood,” called Mrs. Poe, coughing.

I stopped.

“It’s not over.”

I drew a breath, then launched homeward as the remaining molten sunlight dissolved into ash.

Twenty-four

I was dreaming of Samuel. We were in the Athenæum in Boston. He was painting my portrait. My dreaming self thrilled when he threw down his brushes, climbed upon my couch, and lifted my skirts to take me. When two well-dressed matrons strolled into the gallery, he scrambled off me, then nodded to them pleasantly as they passed. They smiled until they saw my portrait. With a shriek, they flew from the chamber, their slippers tapping against the marble floor. I pushed up from the couch and turned around the painting.

It was me, naked, with legs splayed open to reveal my dark secret self.

I was writhing with shame and horror when I was startled awake. Before I could make sense of what had aroused me, a distant boom rattled the windows and bed.

I sat up. It was not yet daylight. Next to me, Ellen rubbed her eyes.

“What, Mamma?”

“Shhh. Go back to sleep.” Had I dreamed the explosions? Still disturbed by my nightmare, I stroked her child’s silken hair. Next to her, Vinnie breathed softly in slumber. How could Samuel stay away from these beautiful children? It was July nineteenth and still I’d not heard a word from him. Whether he was with a divorcée in Cincinnati or not, I hated the man.

Another distant blast shook the room. My body rang with fear. Could we be at war? But we had no real enemies—did we?

“Stay here,” I whispered to Ellen, then threw on a wrapper and went downstairs. I found the front door open and Catherine and Bridget standing on the sidewalk in the weakening darkness, the latter clutching a skillet like a weapon. Neighbors, still in night dress,
and their servants stood in the street, looking south, where in the pearly gray pall of predawn, a black plume of smoke billowed into sky. Fire alarm bells began to clang from the watchtower at the Jefferson Market.

Wrapping my robe more tightly, I joined the servants. “What is it?”

“I don’t know, ma’am,” said Bridget.

“Where’s Mr. Bartlett?”

She glanced at me, then away. “At work, I think, ma’am.”

It was much too early for his shop to be open but he had been keeping strange hours since Eliza had left. She had taken the children to Providence to escape the heat that Monday, leaving the house staff and Mr. Bartlett behind. Mary was to have gone with them but had developed a sore throat that had caused her to stay home—the second girl, Martha, had gone in her stead. When Mary had recovered soon after Eliza had left, my girls had rejoiced to have her to themselves.

“Where is Mary?” I asked.

Another boom rocked the pavement under our feet.

“The British!” wailed the elderly Mrs. White, clutching her gate next door. “The British are coming!”

“They’re our friends now, Mother,” said her grown son Archibald. He trotted back from where he’d been watching on the street. “More likely it’s the Mexicans.”

I peered down Amity Street in the direction of the Poes’ lodging but saw none of them through the thickening crowd. I went inside. My girls were clutching each other in the hall.

“What is it, Mamma?”

“I don’t know. I’m sure it will be all right.” I went back to the door and called in Bridget and Martha.

“Where
is
Mary?” I said when they reluctantly came in. “Find her, and have her take care of the girls. I’m going out.”

The sound of distant fire bells infiltrated the house. “But”—Bridget’s freckled pudding of a face quivered—“Mr. Bartlett!”

“He’ll know what to do. Stay with my girls.”

I dressed hurriedly and ran back into the street, where I pushed my way through the crowd toward Mr. Poe’s house.

He flung open the door before I’d finished knocking. He was
dressed in coat and hat as if ready to leave. I could hear sobbing in a back room.

“I had to see you,” I said. “Thank God you’re safe.”

He clasped me to him. “My darling.”

He let me go when Mrs. Poe ran into the room. I stiffened with guilt but she did not seem to mark my presence.

She threw herself onto Mr. Poe. “I’m scared! It’s like Pompeii!”

Mr. Poe pushed down her arms. “Don’t be silly, Virginia,” he said sternly. “It’s a simple fire.”

“Eddie! Don’t go!”

“Take her,” he said to me. “The fire’s downtown. I must save what manuscripts I can.”

“Has it spread to your building?” I said in alarm.

“I’ve been to the fire tower at Jefferson Market. The watchman says a warehouse caught fire on Broad Street. It set off something explosive. The whole neighborhood is ablaze.”

“Close to your office.”

“Don’t go!” Mrs. Poe begged.

Her mother tottered after her, hands clutched. “Eddie, Eddie, you’re scaring us.”

“Watch them,” Mr. Poe told me.

“You don’t want me anymore,” Mrs. Poe wailed. “You won’t even touch me.”

He placed her grimly into my arms. “Don’t let her go outside.” He stormed out the door, leaving her sobbing in my arms.

The airiness of her frame shocked me, as if her bones were hollow. She had no more substance than a sparrow.

I put an awkward hand to her forehead. It was hot, as if she had a fever. Her condition had worsened in the two weeks since I had seen her last.

“Don’t worry. He’ll be fine.”

“He doesn’t love me,” she cried into my shoulder. “He loves you, not me.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is; I know it is. All he ever talks about is you. ‘Mrs. Osgood this, Mrs. Osgood that. Why can’t you behave like Mrs. Osgood?’ ”

“Shhh. This is wild talk.” I had won. Yet I was devastated.

She buried her head in my shoulder and broke into a cough. Over my own thudding heart, I could feel the rattle inside her chest as she barked. I didn’t know which illness would consume her first, the one in her body or the one in her mind.

“Hush now,” I said. “It’s you who he loves. Didn’t he say he couldn’t go on living if you didn’t marry him?”

“Words, words, words, words. Eddie’s not a real man—he’s just a shell made of words. Don’t fall in love with a poet, Mrs. Osgood. All they love is their words.” She sank against me in a fit of coughing.

“Mrs. Clemm,” I called, shaken, “have you any tea for her?”

Mrs. Clemm, watching mutely, got up. She disappeared into the back room, then came back with a brown bottle from which Mrs. Poe drank directly. Mrs. Poe, exhausted by her fit, slid down upon the sofa. I stretched her out upon it, removed her shoes, and folded her weightless hands upon her chest. I hastily put them down again at her sides—she looked so very dead. She slept, frightening me with the depth of her slumber. Several times I felt her throat to make sure that she was breathing. Only the worry about my own children convinced me to finally leave her.

Outside, the air had become hazy with smoke. In the artificial twilight, horses screamed from their stables. Infants wailed, inconsolable. The crowd on the street had thinned, whether gone to gape at the area that was burning or to flee town, I did not know. I ran down the sidewalk, dodging weeping women and servants carrying trunks. I needed to get to my daughters. I ached from the very marrow of my bones to hold them.

I found them in the downstairs family room, playing Old Maid with Bridget and Catherine, their faces pinched with fright.

They jumped up and threw themselves against me.

“Don’t worry,” I said with a confidence I did not feel. “We shall be safe. The fire warden is not calling for our evacuation.” Yet. Just ten years ago, nearly half of the city had burned in just such a fire.

I glanced around the room. “Where’s Mary?”

Bridget and Catherine exchanged looks.

“Will you be needin’ some breakfast, ma’am?” Bridget asked, her voice shaking.

If we had not been ordered to leave, then to stave off panic, we must go about our life as usual.

“Yes. Please. A poached egg—and for the girls, too, please.”

I had taken my place at the table with the girls, and was confronting my egg, wondering how I could possibly choke it down, when the front door banged open. Catherine jumped up to see. I locked gazes with Bridget as dragging footsteps neared the stairs.

Mr. Bartlett came down, a hank of damp blond hair flopping on his wet brow. In his arms was Mary, her limbs hanging lifelessly.

“Get her some water,” he told Bridget as he eased Mary onto the sofa. “She took in too much smoke.” He marched upstairs, not waiting for praise for his heroics.

“What were you doing out there?” I demanded of Mary.

She lifted her face, smudged with smoke, then burst into tears.

She would say nothing more, but slept, with anguished outbursts of tears.

•  •  •

It seems incredible, but Miss Lynch insisted upon keeping her conversazione that evening, sending word by her servant Sarah that we should come. More incredibly, we did. Even as the men of the volunteer fire companies were chopping flaming timbers and training their hoses upon blocks of burning warehouses, fighting to contain the flames to the streets south of Broad, we were eating cookies and draining our tea, as if our mundane acts would hold our world together. The Astor House and Mr. Bartlett’s shop within it, Mr. Brady’s studio, the publishing firms on Nassau, including the
Tribune
and Mr. Poe’s
Journal
—all had been narrowly missed. Now we gathered to compare losses, swap stories, and marvel at how and why we’d been spared, the separation between front and back parlor dissolved for the evening. We were kind, almost tender, to one another. Fear had equalized us.