On the Day I Died (16 page)

Then the outside world simply slipped away. I was no longer aware of the Turkish carpet beneath my feet, or of my other toys, or even of my nursemaid rocking quietly in the corner. The blue block commanded my full attention. All my focus. Every corner of my mind. I turned the toy over. I could make out the tiny lines of the wood’s grain, smell its faint piney odor, sense the nearly invisible strokes of the paintbrush. I dwelt on the block’s heft. I lingered on its shape. And in my mind’s eye, I could change it. Alter it. I saw the block miraculously stretching, expanding into toy houses and streets, then enlarging into real houses, real streets, then into schools, shops, cities, entire nations all made of my rectangular blue block. I became one with the block—my mood, my thoughts, everything. I was the block. The block was I.

I awakened from this state—surfaced as if from a pool—sweating and shivering in my crib. Mother and Father were peering down at me with pinched faces while the nursemaid held a cold compress to my forehead.

“His eyes are open!” Mother cried.

Another face joined theirs, gray-bearded and wearing
spectacles. Dr. Marquis pressed a stethoscope to my chest. “How do you feel, little fellow?” he said. “You’ve been away for hours.”

Away? Whatever did he mean by
away
? I blinked. I felt as if I had just awoken from a very confused, yet very exciting dream.

“I’m thirsty,” I said.

While the nursemaid lifted my head and touched a glass of water to my lips, my parents and the doctor huddled together by the door. I strained my ears to hear, catching words I did not understand, like
monomania
and
madness
.

“Madness?” gasped Mother.

“Utter nonsense,” hissed Father. Even though I could not see his face, I could tell he was clenching his teeth the way he always did when he was angry.

Mother cringed. “Charles,” she began, her voice fluttering nervously. She reached out tentatively, laid a timid hand on his arm.

He shoved it away. “No one in the Allerton family has ever been given to such weakness, either in body
or
in mind.”

“But if the doctor thinks poor little Edgar is ill, perhaps it would be best—”

Father exploded. “Edgar is
not
ill, I say!”

Mother seemed to collapse inward. “Yes, Charles,” she hastily agreed. “You’re right, of course. As always.”

Father turned on Dr. Marquis, his white teeth
gnashing with rage. “No one must hear of this … this episode,” he growled. “I cannot tolerate gossip about myself or my family. Do you understand me? No one must hear of this. No one!”

Dr. Marquis placed a bracing hand on Father’s shoulder. “And no one
will
hear of it, sir, I can assure you. Besides, I am not suggesting that Edgar is permanently mad. No, in my opinion this is a singular incident, brought on by too few naps, perhaps, or too many rich foods. There is no reason to believe that little Edgar will experience another such episode.”

He was wrong, of course. The doctors were always wrong. As I grew older, my ponderings (as I came to call them) grew stronger, more frequent and intense. For an entire evening my attention could be riveted by a spider’s web. I could lose a whole day contemplating a flower petal that had fallen onto the carpet.

And as these episodes became more pronounced, I could feel Father hardening toward me. No longer did he look across the dining table with paternal pride, or talk of the day when I would take over the family pork-packing business. Each of my ponderings was yet another brick in the wall that was growing between us.

“What would my business associates say if they knew I had sired such a feeble-minded son!” growled Father to Mother one afternoon.

I had been playing on the parlor floor with my tin
soldiers—the ones I had received just a week earlier for my eleventh birthday—when I had slipped away, pondering the fringe at the carpet’s edge. By the time I returned to myself minutes later, Father was glaring, his hard white teeth clenched.

“Why, the lower classes have a better grasp of reality than he does,” he raged on.

By “lower classes,” I knew he meant the men who worked for him—Irish and German immigrants mostly, who spent fourteen hours a day covered in a mixture of animal grease and blood, all for the handful of pennies Father paid them; men whose families shivered in rotting pine shanties surrounded by slime and disease while we resided in our thirty-room mansion with its elegant mansard roof and sprawling green lawn.

“Have I worked myself to the bone merely to hand it all over to a lunatic son?” He ground his teeth. “I tell you, Adele, I can hardly stand to look at him.”

“He’ll outgrow it.” Mother’s voice quavered. “The doctors have promised he’ll outgrow it.”

“He had better,” Father said with a cold finality.

There was a brisk knock at the parlor door then, and our housekeeper, Mrs. Kolin, entered with a message for Father.

“It’s from Cyrus McCormick!” he exclaimed after reading the note. “He is coming
here
tomorrow morning to discuss business.” Gone was the anger of moments before. Now Father looked more buoyant and elated than
I had ever seen him. “Do you know what an honor it is to receive a call from such a man as Mr. McCormick? Do you?” He whirled on Mother. “Everything must be arranged perfectly, do you understand, Adele? The flowers, the luncheon …”

“Oh, yes, Charles,” Mother said brightly, obediently. “I will see to it all.”

From the carpet, I smiled at Father’s happy mood.

His eyes fell on me, and the pleasure drained from his face. “And for Heaven’s sake, Adele, keep
him
out of sight.”

Mother tensed. She nodded.

My smile faded.

The next morning, from the playroom, where I was sequestered, I heard the doorbell ring. I looked over at Agnes, the young maid assigned the task of keeping an eye on me while Mr. McCormick visited. She was curled up on the window seat, thoroughly engrossed in the fashion section of
Godey’s Lady’s Book
.

The doorbell rang again.

I was desperately curious. Who was this man who could dent my father’s iron demeanor? I had to get a glimpse!

Easing myself away from my toy soldiers, I tiptoed out of the playroom and down the long hallway. At the top of the stairs, I ducked and peeked between the railings.

Mr. McCormick stood in the foyer, a portly man of regal bearing, with graying hair and an even grayer
goatee. He wore an impressive top hat, an elegant waistcoat and …

The world began to contract.

I could hear blood surging in my head, and my hands and feet began to tingle. It would happen soon. I knew it. The pondering. I tried to hold on, tried to turn back to the playroom. But my attention was already locked in. I made my way down the stairs and into the foyer, unable to pull my eyes or my mind away from Mr. McCormick’s walking stick.

“Edgar!” I heard my father say sternly. His voice was so loud, I must have been standing right beside him. And yet I could not see him. In my mind, all was darkness, except for a shaft of light illuminating the object of my attention.

I stretched my hand toward it.

“The boy has fine taste,” came another voice—Mr. McCormick’s voice. “This walking stick once belonged to King Louis the Sixteenth himself. Here, boy, take a look.”

My fingers locked around the mahogany stick. Oh, how silky the wood! How cool the golden handle against my cheek! Was that an eagle engraved in the gold? It was. And look at its green gemstone eyes! Green like the grass, like the spring leaves with the sun behind them, like the algae on the goldfish pond before the gardener skimmed it off …

They tell me I stood there for more than two hours,
clutching Mr. McCormick’s cane; that Father grabbed my shoulders and through his clenched, white teeth hissed, “This is madness, Edgar. Stop at once!” But no matter what they did, they couldn’t pry my fingers away or bring me back to reality. At one point, they say, I even bit Father’s hand, drawing blood. I don’t remember it. I don’t remember any of it. Luncheon, of course, was ruined, and no business was discussed. Mr. McCormick finally went home without his stick, my father promising to return it as soon as possible.

“Why, Edgar?” Mother whimpered later that night. Her face was pale, her eyes wide. “Why did you do it? You’ve made your father furious.”

Below, we could hear him storming about his study. Books flew. Feet pounded. Doors slammed.

As always after an episode, I was weak and lightheaded. Tears welled up in my eyes. I didn’t want to be this way, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t have any control over the ponderings. “I’m sorry,” I managed to say. “I’m sorry.”

She wrapped trembling arms around me. “As am I,” she whispered.

The next morning before the sun had even risen, our driver, George, brought the carriage around to the servants’ door, and I was stuffed inside like so much dirty laundry.

“What is happening?” I wailed. “Where’s Mother?”

“Hush now, Master Edgar,” Agnes said. She tossed my canvas bag of tin soldiers in after me. “You don’t want to make a scene in front of the neighbors, now, do you?”

I clutched the bag to my chest and sniffled loudly.

“That’s a good boy. Be brave.” She slammed the carriage door, motioning for George to go.

But we had rolled only a few feet when the door was ripped open and Mother flung herself into the carriage. She pressed me to her chest, kissed my forehead over and over again.

“Oh, Edgar,” she sobbed, and even in my confusion, I couldn’t help noticing how disheveled she looked. She was still wearing last night’s clothing, the wrinkled silk of her dress looking as tired as she did. Her face was tear-stained, and there was a darkening fist of a bruise forming on her left cheek. “He told me I couldn’t say goodbye, but … oh, my darling!” With feverish hands she lifted my face toward her own, her voice pleading. “Try to forgive me, Edgar, try to understand. I’m not strong, not strong enough to stand up to him.”

“Madam,” cried Agnes, “please!” Grabbing my mother’s arm, she pulled her away. Once again, the carriage door slammed.

“Edgar!” wailed Mother.

There came a snap of the whip, and we headed down the long driveway, gravel crackling under the wheels. I turned and looked back. Through my tears, I saw Mother hanging limp as a rag doll in Agnes’s arms. And behind
them, gazing out the dining room window, stood Father. Lifting a teacup with his bandaged hand, he took a sip. Then he drew the curtain.

The carriage rolled up Prairie Avenue past the stone-turreted mansions of Father’s good friends Mr. Ogden and Mr. Potter before heading north along bustling Michigan Avenue. To my right stretched the lake, an endless blue as far as my eye could see. To my left, grain houses dominated the skyline: huge slate-surfaced storage sheds, rising higher than the steeples of the city’s churches. We turned along the river, headed toward the tangle of rail lines. How was I to know that this would be the last time I would see any of this?

George pulled up before the train station and, taking my small hand firmly in his, dragged me through the mammoth steel shed. Steam engines sputtered. Bells clanged. Brakemen shouted, “Shee-caw-go! Shee-caw-go!”

I gripped my bag of tin soldiers even more tightly. “Where are we going, George?” I shouted above the din.

“North, Master Edgar, to your father’s hunting lodge in Wisconsin,” he replied.

I hadn’t known Father owned a hunting lodge. I looked at the hastily packed suitcase George held in his other hand. And I understood. The episode with Mr. McCormick had been the last straw. Father had banished me.

The door of a first-class passenger car was flung
open. George pushed me up and in, then passed my suitcase to a gray-uniformed porter.

“You are coming with me, aren’t you?” I asked. Surely Father didn’t mean to send me on the train without a chaperone.

But George shook his head. “I’m sorry, young sir, but you’re going to have to make the rest of the journey all by yourself.”

All by myself
.

I could barely comprehend it as the porter stowed my luggage and settled me on one of the car’s velvet-upholstered seats.

All by myself
.

I pressed my nose to the beveled-glass window as the car filled with other passengers. Then, after what seemed like an interminable wait, there came a furious blast of whistles, and the train at last slid from the station.

Oh, how bleak was the scenery through which I passed—miles of soot-covered factories, chimneys belching black smoke into the sky, mountains of slag and coal. Then the train tore through the grimy smoke and burst into the vast loneliness of the prairie. Chicago—my home—became nothing more than a dark smear on the horizon.

Holding tight to my tin soldiers, I pressed my cheek to the plush cushions and wept.

The train traveled on, the prairie eventually giving
way to rows of corn and sagging barns. It rattled past wooded ravines and through endless small farm settlements, stopping occasionally to let off or take on passengers. Finally, just after sundown, it stopped at a tiny train station.

“Here we are, young sir,” said the porter.

I glanced out the window. A man wearing overalls stood on the dusty platform. It was obvious he was waiting for me.

It took only a moment to help me down the stairs and hand over my luggage.

I looked around, but in the dark saw little more than the press of shadowy trees. I smelled pine needles and woodsmoke. In the distance, an owl hooted.

The train hissed and rumbled away.

And the farmer led me to his wagon. With a flick of the reins, we were off, following a narrow, rutted trail that led deep into the woods. Were there werewolves in these woods? Witches, as in the story of Hansel and Gretel? Then the house appeared and I sighed with relief. It was an ordinary place with, I soon would discover, two bedrooms upstairs, and a kitchen, parlor and dining room downstairs. There was even a small library.

Someone tall and dour, dressed in deep black, met me at the door. “Good evening, sir,” she said, her piercing eyes never leaving mine. “I am your housekeeper, Mrs. Usher.”