A Fall of Marigolds (11 page)

“‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is about expectation and fulfillment,” he whispered.

“What . . . what does that mean?” I whispered back.

“Sometimes the expectation is better than the fulfillment.”

It still made no sense to me. “How?” I whispered. “How does the poem say that?”

“‘Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter
.
’ Keats is saying what you can still dream about is often sweeter than the reality.”

For a moment I could not move as I let these words soak into me.

I seemed riveted to the floor and Andrew’s gaze.

Dr. Randall called for me and I pushed my cart away from Andrew’s bed, murmuring my thanks.

AFTER
our shift was over, and as the New York skyline across from us began to turn auburn, Dolly and I returned to our room, she to dress for her night out on the town, and I to watch her get ready. In my hands I carried the folded-over pillowcase containing Lily’s scarf.

She and I and the other nurses liked to wash our own undergarments rather than send them to the laundry with our uniforms to be scrubbed and boiled by rough hands and rougher contraptions. And we used a lavender-scented antiseptic we made with carbolic and diluted with hot water to kill any contagion lingering on our clothes. It was normal to see wet things hanging in our communal bathroom after a gentle scrubbing in one of the basins. Tonight, when I returned from the commons to my empty room, I would wash Lily’s scarf and allow it to dry unnoticed in my dormitory room.

While Dolly tossed her white nurse’s uniform onto her bed and faced her wardrobe, I nonchalantly dropped the pillowcase in the corner on my side of the room near where my own laundry was gathered in a basket. When I turned back around, Dolly was attempting to stuff her full figure into a lime green party dress that had come in the mail that week from her sister-in-law. I reached into my own wardrobe and pulled out a navy blue skirt and plain ivory shirtwaist.

“Good Lord, no wonder Josephine sent me this thing,” Dolly exclaimed. “She told me she would never fit into it again after the baby, but I bet she never fit into this thing. Help me with these hooks, Clara.”

I laid the clothes on my bed and walked over to her. The bodice was already tight around Dolly’s back, with a good inch of space still gaping between the hooks and eyes. “There’s no way I can fasten them, Dolly. Sorry.”

“Try!”

I pulled at the fabric, knowing it was futile. There was too much Dolly and not enough dress. “It’s not going to work.”

“Oh, bother it!” She pulled at the sleeves and shimmied her hips. After a few contortions the dress fell to the floor and Dolly stepped out of it. “You should wear it for your date tonight.”

“It’s not a date, and I would wear pajamas before I’d step into the commons wearing a ball gown.”

Dolly bent down and picked up the dress. It made a swishy sound. “It’s not exactly a ball gown. More like a . . . a party frock.”

“I’m not going to a party.”

“Don’t tell me you’re wearing that!” She waved her dress in the direction of my bed and the clothes lying on it.

I glanced at the skirt and blouse I’d chosen. “I seriously doubt Dr. Randall will be wearing anything other than street clothes. And that’s what these are.”

Dolly tossed the party dress onto her bed and then turned to face me in her pale pink corset. “Will you at least let me fix your hair?”

“I don’t know. . . .”

She reached into her bureau drawer and pulled out a cloisonné hair comb in shades of periwinkle and cornflower blue. “I’ve always thought you would look good in this comb. It clashes something terrible with my red hair and green eyes and I wear it anyway. Your brown hair and blue eyes, though? Perfect. Turn around.”

“You’ll be late. You’re not even dressed yet.”

“I will not be late. And the girls won’t let the ferry leave without me. Sit at the vanity and face the mirror.”

I obeyed. Dolly pulled the pins from my chignon and they clinked on the vanity top as she tossed them there. My hair fell around my shoulders and then Dolly began to brush it.

“You’ve got the best natural curl in all of Christendom, Clara. Do you know how lucky you are?”

I closed my eyes as the bristles massaged my scalp. “It’s just hair, Dolly.”

“Apparently you don’t.”

I smiled. She continued to brush.

“Will you promise me you will try to have a good time tonight?”

“I don’t think a person can
try
to have a good time,” I answered. “You either have a good time when you go somewhere or you don’t.”

“You know what I mean. Promise me you will stay longer than ten minutes.”

“I can’t talk about poetry for longer than ten minutes.”

“Oh, for the love of God, Clara, there are plenty of other things to talk about. Ask him where he’s from. What he likes to do for enjoyment. What his favorite color is.” She stopped brushing and I opened my eyes to look at her in the mirror’s reflection.

She brushed one side of my hair up past my ear and slid the comb into place, leaving the other side to fall naturally past my shoulders. The effect was very pretty.

“I don’t usually wear my hair down,” I said.

“Well, you should. You have beautiful hair. Go put on those boring clothes.”

I stood, slipped out of my nurse’s uniform and into the skirt and shirtwaist. It had been so long since I had prepared for an evening out with a man, I had forgotten that getting ready for it was part of the thrill. The day of the fire, as I rode the elevator to meet Edward, I had felt a little like this. Like I had wanted to reach up to my hair and let it loose. I remember pinching my cheeks as the elevator ascended.

When I turned back toward our vanity, I was amazed at the transformation Dolly had wrangled with just a different hairstyle and a pretty accessory. Even my clothes looked better with the cloisonné comb to accent them.

“I could easily hate you,” Dolly muttered. “You look like you just stepped out of the pages of
Vanity Fair
.”

“I do not.”

“You make even those schoolmarm clothes look nice. If I wore those I’d be mistaken for Mrs. Nesbitt.”

“He will think I am trying to impress him.” I touched a curly lock of my hair as it rested on my shoulder.

“He will think nothing of the sort. He invited you, remember? He’s trying to impress you.”

I tossed the lock behind me. “I don’t want to be impressed.”

“I don’t believe you. You don’t even believe you. Help me pick another dress.”

Dolly went to her open wardrobe, slid the hangers on the rung, and pulled out a ruffled dress the color of the sky. She held the dress up to her face. “Does this make me look pale? Nellie says this dress makes me look pale.”

“It doesn’t make you look pale. And I know what you’re doing. You’re pretending not to hear what I’m saying.”

She tossed the hanger onto her bed and stepped into the skirt. “I’m not pretending anything. I just don’t believe you. You’re in love with a dream, Clara. Sooner or later you’re going to wake up from it and you’ll be glad I didn’t coddle you while you slept.”

“Edward wasn’t a dream.”

“I’m not talking about Edward. I’m talking about the reason you’re hiding here on this island. You’re in love with what might’ve been. Help me with the hooks.”

It took me a moment to close the distance between us so that I could grab hold of the hooks and eyes and yank them together. “What
would’ve
been.”

“Might’ve.” She turned to face me. “Might’ve. You barely knew the man.”

“I knew enough! And in case you’ve forgotten, he died before I could know more.”

“And then you came here and stopped wondering.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Dolly stepped into a pair of dancing shoes. “I already told you. You could easily find out more about Edward if you really wanted to. But you’re here where you can’t.”

A knock on our door silenced us. I wrenched the door open and Nellie and Ivy were standing there, both clearly having heard too much.

I’d been stupid to have this conversation when I knew Dolly was getting ready to meet the ferry to Manhattan. I should have guessed the girls would come looking for her. Stupid.

“I’ll be there in a jiffy,” Dolly called over her shoulder.

“Sorry you can’t come with us,” Ivy said to me, her voice sounding thoroughly patronizing.

“Yes, too bad,” Nellie chimed in, sounding slightly less so.

I could see it in their faces.
Who is Edward?

“Another time perhaps.” I stepped aside so that they could wait for Dolly inside our room if they wished. They remained on the threshold.

“Your hair looks nice down like that,” Nellie said.

“She has the hair of a goddess.” Dolly doused her neck with cologne and grabbed a wrap and a plumed hat from inside her open wardrobe. She came to me and took me into her arms to hug me good night. But she also whispered in my ear, “Don’t be mad at me. And be nice to the doctor.”

“Don’t tell them,” I whispered back before she could let go of me.

She pulled away, leaving her freshly sprayed cologne on my clothes and hair. “Of course not,” she said. She pressed the hat to her head and grabbed a handbag from the top of her dresser as she swished to the door.

They said good night to me, each one wearing an expression that I couldn’t look away from fast enough. Dolly’s was a mix of maternal care and encouragement, Nellie’s a sympathetic stare, Ivy’s a look of itching curiosity.

I closed the door and waited for the heat of my embarrassment to dissipate. They would pump Dolly for details on the way down to the ferry.
Who is Edward? What happened to him? How did he die?

I didn’t want Dolly to lie to them. I didn’t want her to tell the truth.

I wanted her to tell them it was none of their business.

And maybe she would. But that wouldn’t end their curiosity. The breach was widening in my in-between place and it seemed I was now thoroughly powerless to close it.

I sat on the edge of my bed, contemplating my options. Edward’s name was no longer a secret; nor were my feelings for him. I could not keep Nellie and Ivy forever in the dark about who he was. If they came back later tonight having gotten nothing out of Dolly, they would surely press me for details. And if I didn’t fill in the blanks, they would speculate, not just between each other, but probably with other nurses on the island.

There would be talk, whispers on the air—because what else was there to talk about here?—of my sad little tragedy. And once the island knew what I had brought with me, it would cease to be a place that the fire had not touched.

Maybe Dolly was partly right. Maybe I was in love with a dream as well as with the man who had spun it. But it was my dream. And on the island I could keep it spinning. It seemed the only place I could keep it.

I reached under my pillow for Lily’s book and “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” hungry to find those lines of poetry that spoke of the images on the urn occupying a better place than the real things they represented. I read it twice. The second time through the poem seemed on the very edge of clarity to me. It was as if I stood just outside the door of a well-lit house, but I was on the mat outside, waiting in the darkness to be let in. In that moment I longed to rush to Andrew, not Dr. Randall, to ask him about the poem. I imagined reading it aloud to Andrew and having him tell me, line by line, how the words spoke of the tension between that which changes and that which stays the same.

When it was time to go down to the commons, I couldn’t decide whether I should bring Lily’s book with me or leave it. I didn’t want to answer any questions about where I had gotten it. Then again, I wouldn’t have to.

I wasn’t staying.

I
found Dr. Randall seated in an armchair near shelves that held the staff’s small lending library. He wore charcoal pants, a russet-hued vest, and a shirt the shade of butter. A newspaper was open in his hands. The seat of the matching chair next to his was covered by his suit coat.

As I neared him he looked up, smiled, and set the newspaper on the circular table in between the chairs. Then he reached for his suit coat, which he’d apparently been using to save the chair for me, though the commons was nearly empty.

“Good evening, Miss Wood! I see you’ve come prepared.” He nodded at the slim volume I held in my hand. “I’m lucky I found Keats in an anthology in the shelves here or you would outshine me for certain.”

“There would be no chance of that, I assure you.” I took the seat, but sat forward in the pose of one ready to rise momentarily and exit.

“I’m sure you are being too modest.”

I shook my head. “Not at all, Doctor. I owe you an apology. I misspoke when I told you I liked Keats. I don’t know why I said that.”

He smiled, surely thinking I had said it to impress him.

“I was just having a bit of fun,” I hastily added.

Dr. Randall’s smile deepened and he tipped his head toward Lily’s book. “So you don’t like Keats, but you have his book?”

“It’s not actually my book. It . . . it belongs to someone else.”

“So you have a borrowed book of Keats and you don’t like Keats?”

I mentally chewed on an answer before deciding vague honesty would actually ease me out of this doomed discussion of “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” “This person happens to like Keats.”

“Ah. A friend of yours?”

The book was technically Andrew’s now. I considered him nearly a friend. “You could say that.”

“But not a suitor.” Caution laced Dr. Randall’s words. I could tell he was a man of integrity, and not one to make advances on a woman who was already spoken for.

“No,” I said, and he visibly relaxed.

“So what about Keats don’t you like?” Dr. Randall leaned back in his chair, ready to begin an evening-long discussion.

“I don’t think you will want to get too comfortable, Doctor. I’ve misled you. I can’t even say that I don’t like Keats. I have only read one poem by him.”

“But you read that one and you didn’t like it. That means there is plenty to discuss. It’s actually better this way. If we both liked it, what would there be to talk about? And will you please call me Ethan?”

A lengthy lock of hair fell about my face. I swept back the part that wasn’t tugged into the comb. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I was taught—”

“Yes, I know what they teach in nursing school. And tomorrow on the ward you can call me ‘doctor’ if you wish. But we are both off duty. I am just Ethan. May I call you Clara?”

I cleared away a tiny tickle in my throat. “I think you should call me Miss Wood.”

He smiled. “All right, Miss Wood. Then perhaps you could call me Mr. Randall. Not ‘doctor.’ Agreed?”

“Perhaps.”

“So tell me what you didn’t like about ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn.’”

I was prepared to say my piece and excuse myself. It wouldn’t take but a few minutes. “It was too difficult to understand. I said as much to you in the ward today. I think if you’re going to write about something, then you shouldn’t be vague. Use interesting words if they delight you, but don’t shroud your meaning in obscurity. I don’t see the good in that.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “I actually agree with you there, but I’d venture that true devotees of verse would say obscurity is part of a poem’s charm.”

“Which makes me, as I said, a person who knowingly deceived you. I’m not a devotee of verse. I led you to believe I was and I’m not. Forgive me.” I rose from my chair to bid him good night.

“Miss Wood, you mistake me for someone who cares about all that! Please don’t go. Please?” His eyes and voice implored me to retake my seat. I hesitated before slowly lowering myself back into the chair.

“I am not overly fond of poetry myself,” he continued. “But when you said you liked it, I was willing to find a poem we could talk about together. The after-hours on this island are far too quiet. I don’t see how you’ve been able to live here week after week after week. I tell you, I will be glad when my internship is up.”

A queer sense of allegiance for my island stirred inside me. “I like it here.”

He laughed lightly. “Truly? You don’t get bored?”

“No.”

“But you do look forward to weekends, when you can get away and reconnect with the real world, right? Don’t you find yourself growing hungry for something bigger than this?” He motioned with his hand to include the bit of borrowed earth the hospital stood on.

I had no intention of telling him what my soul hungered for, so I simply repeated what I had already said. “I like it here.”

He frowned slightly. “You’re saying you
don’t
look forward to the evenings you can get away?”

“We do good things here. People come to Ellis full of hope. The ones who are sent to the hospital have dreams that are twice as grand because they want so badly to get well. It’s very rewarding to see them board that ferry to the mainland at last.”

“Well, yes, of course. But I was not talking about them. I was talking about you. It’s admirable that you are content in your post here, but I can’t imagine you do not long for stimulation outside this hospital. Tell me, what do you like to do when you go ashore?”

This was a conversation I was not going to have. “If we aren’t going to discuss Keats, Doctor, perhaps I should return to my room.” Again, I rose to leave.

“Then let’s discuss Keats!” He had risen to his feet too. “Please?” He motioned with his hand to my chair. I sat back down and so did he.

He pursed his brows in contemplation, surely thinking that if the next thing out of his mouth wasn’t a Keats question, I was going to bolt.

“Perhaps I could read the poem aloud to you? Can we start there?” he asked.

“I’ve read the poem half a dozen times in the last two days. I don’t need to hear it again.”

His face brightened at this, taking it as a compliment, I think. I’d been thinking ahead to our meeting—or so it seemed to him.

“Well, perhaps I could read it again for my own benefit.” He stretched out his hand toward me. “May I?”

I stared at him. “May you what?”

He grinned. “Borrow your borrowed book.”

I hesitated a moment, but then opened Lily’s book to the first poem inside and handed it to him.

Ethan Randall smoothed the page and cleared his throat. He began to read and I found myself quickly immersed in a lyric fog of words that were both familiar and strange. I closed my eyes as the words fell about my ears. I was still at a loss to decipher the poem’s full message, but Dr. Randall’s reading voice was strong and robust and I could nearly envision the urn and its painted surface. He had been finished for a moment or two before I realized he had stopped reading. I snapped my eyes open to find him looking at me.

“Your thoughts, Miss Wood?”

“Um. What do you think it means?” I answered quickly.

“I suppose the urn is something of a storyteller. In the story there is a lovely forest, and there are maidens and men, pipers and dancers, and trees that never lose their leaves because it is always springtime on the urn. It doesn’t change.”

“It’s an in-between place . . .” I murmured, realizing this about the urn for the first time.

“Well, I guess you could say it’s in between real and imaginary. The pictures on the urn aren’t real but they’re not invisible either.”

Whispered words echoed in my head. “Someone told me it’s a poem about fulfilled expectations not being as satisfying as the dream of them,” I said, more to myself than to him. “Heard melodies are not as sweet as the tunes we can imagine hearing.”

Dr. Randall nodded. “Well. Yes. Yes, I could see it meaning this. Someone told you this?”

But I barely heard him ask. Andrew’s words to me earlier drifted and an image of Edward standing next to me in the elevator replaced them. Edward was inviting me to come to the sewing floor a few minutes before five. Edward of my dreams, bidding me to come to a floor he should not have been on a few minutes before five. Edward, gone from me. Like an urn broken to bits on the ground after having been flung from the sky.

“Do you believe that?” I finally said. “Do you believe that an unfulfilled desire is better because it’s something you can still dream about?”

“I . . . I don’t know. I have never thought about it like that. When I’ve wanted something, I’ve always pursued it with the intention of acquiring it. I can’t imagine being happy with just wanting it. Seems like you’d get tired of nothing ever changing.”

“That is like saying change is always good. Change is neither good nor bad. Good changes are good. Bad changes are bad.”

Ethan Randall smiled at me and I remembered him telling me he liked talking philosophy. “Well said, Miss Wood.” He patted the newspaper that lay between us. “Speaking of change, I was reading just now about that terrible fire you survived. The criminal trial won’t take place until December, but there is already change in the works for better labor laws . . .”

His voice droned on but I felt myself physically disengage from the conversation the moment he said the word “fire.” The rest of what he said became like water falling out of a bucket, splashing over the sides of the widening rift in my carefully crafted island home. I had not known there was to be a criminal trial. I had avoided looking at newspapers, and my parents and sister never brought up the fire’s aftermath in their letters to me, because I had asked them not to. The fire hadn’t raged here and didn’t live on here. But in the streets of lower Manhattan—just as I had feared—smoke was still rising. I stared down at my shoes, fully expecting to see ashes and blood all around them.

“Miss Wood?”

I heard my name as though it had been spoken from behind a brick wall.

“A trial?” I murmured, but my voice sounded far away.

“Yes. The owners are being charged with manslaughter.”

I raised my hands to my ears instinctively.

“Are you all right?”

I sensed an edge of alarm in his voice.

“Clara?”

He spoke my name, but I didn’t care. The room felt warm.

“Let’s step outside for a moment. You’ve gone pale. You need air.”

His arms were around me as he helped me to my feet.

“The book,” I muttered.

“I have it right here. Come on. I’ve got you.”

We stepped out into the late-August evening.