Mrs. Poe (12 page)

“As far from him as possible.”

We crossed the room, nodding to persons along the way but not pausing. I could sense their inquisitive stares on my back as we left the parlor for the hall.

“Far enough?”

“Not yet.”

We processed down the hall to an alcove under the stairs, a book-lined nook lit by a single lamp on a doily-covered table. He seated me on the sole chair, where I was enveloped by the old-fashioned smell of burning whale oil and decaying paper. The melancholy song of the cello moaned in the distance. From upstairs came the murmur of a woman’s voice, rising and falling as she told a story to the children.

“Now far enough?”

I tamped back a smile. “I think so.”

He stood by the chair, within plain view from the hall, should anyone come looking.

When he did not speak, I said, “How did you know I needed saving?”

“Everyone in the room knew, except Griswold.”

“Oh, dear, am I that transparent?”

“No. He is that unbearable.”

We smiled at each other briefly. I then sniffed at the snowdrops again, not knowing where to put my gaze.

He peered at the books as if to find something. Abruptly, he said. “I’m glad that we have a moment to speak. I have been thinking about our conversation the other day.”

I glanced up.

“About the painter nailing a soul to a canvas.”

I laughed. “I fear that sounds rather grim at the moment.”

He regarded me calmly, as if waiting for me to grow serious.

“Please continue,” I said. Did he know how his dark-lashed eyes unnerved me?

“I wrote a story a few years ago,” he said, “ ‘The Oval Portrait,’ about an artist who is painting his new bride’s wedding portrait. In it, his wife sits for him day after day, week after week, as he tries to perfect the painting. You see, he wishes to achieve what no painter has done before: to make a portrait as real as life. For weeks he works, then months, until at last, he sees to his joy and disbelief that he has
finally
made the portrait seem as alive as his beautiful bride. Her very soul has come to life in the painting! Exulting in his great good fortune, he turns to her to show her his masterpiece. But alas, his wife is dead.”

A chill slid down my spine.

“You see why your statement affected me so,” he said. “I had actually written a story about it.”

“A coincidence.”

“Is it? Most would call it that, I agree. But there are some who would say that such a ‘coincidence’ is not a coincidence at all, but evidence of two spirits in communication.”

“I’m not sure that I understand.”

“In truth, who does? At least not completely. Our world has no name for the sense that detects the realm of which our spirits are part. Yet all of us are swimming in the matter of this other dimension. It is flowing in us, through us, over us, bathing us in its light. Now and then we get a glimmer of its existence. Do we ignore it, fight it, or accept it?”

“Have we a choice?”

“Yes.”

I sniffed at my snowdrops, my heart beating faster. “What if a person accepts it? What then?”

“She faces it.”

By degrees, I raised my eyes to him. He was waiting for me.

Nothing in my past experience prepared me to so baldly receive another person and to not pull away, to let myself be penetrated even as I was penetrating him. I sensed the hurt and pain and sweetness within the man standing above me, while at the same moment I
absorbed the blow of having my innermost self exposed. It became too much. I looked away, elation charging through my body.

When I glanced up again, he did not hold me fully within his gaze.

“I apologize,” he said.

“No need. I am honored that you share your ideas with me.”

“They are not just ideas.”

Our gazes met again, briefly. The jolt of it tingled to my toes.

The cello throbbed in the other room. He drew in a breath. “Virginia is very ill.”

“From your trip today?”

“No.”

When he said no more, I said, “She seemed to be coughing less when I last saw her. You must not worry. She is young and strong and will recover fully, you’ll see.”

His face was bleak. “Will she?”

Miss Fiske and Miss Alcott rustled into the hall. “Ah, there you are!” exclaimed Miss Fiske, blond curls atremble. “Mr. Poe, we were wondering if you might read ‘The Raven’ to the gathering. Miss Lynch said that you might if we asked you nicely.”

“It is the perfect dreary night for it,” said Miss Alcott, her eyes as dreamy as a calf’s.

“Miss Lynch said she would turn down the lights.” Miss Fiske shivered. “It will be most frightening.”

Mr. Poe looked to me.

“Your audience awaits,” I said lightly.

He let himself be ushered from the alcove.

I stayed, listening to the murmur of the children asking questions of the storyteller upstairs. As strange as it sounds, I could feel Mr. Poe’s presence lingering with me. Why had he chosen me as a confidant? I was honored, although I knew it was wrong. But how could I fight against the unspoken current of communication between us? I craved it even as I shied from it.

“Fanny!” Eliza hurried toward me. “There you are! I’ve been looking for you. Poe’s going to read now—are you coming?” She peered at the flowers wilting in my hand. “Are those snowdrops?”

“Mrs. Poe sent them.”

Her honest face clouded with a frown. “Odd. I always heard that bringing snowdrops indoors was unlucky. To do so is said to cause a person’s death.” When she saw my expression, she pulled me to my feet. “Never mind—it’s just a silly old wives’ tale. Come on, before we miss Mr. Poe.”

Spring 1845

Eleven

It was April Fool’s Day, of which I felt every inch. For days after the conversazione, I had found myself waiting, ridiculously enough, for a word from Mr. Poe, for a tap on the door at any moment.
He does not know where you live,
I chided myself. When I reminded myself that he did indeed have Eliza’s address, that I had included it with the poems I had submitted to his journal, I argued back that even if he accepted my poems, why would he come in person to say so when a letter would do? There was no reason for him to trouble himself to come this distance.

Yet, as I sat at the dining table in Eliza’s basement family room with paper and pen, ostensibly to compose a poem, I felt Mr. Poe’s presence in a way that I could not explain. It was as if I knew that he was thinking about me but he could not act upon it, as if our souls were communicating in the strange dimension about which he wrote.

Surely this was not just my imagination. I looked around the room. Could I not
feel
Eliza’s concern for me as she sewed on the sofa, her son Henry playing with his tin soldiers at her feet? Could I not
feel
the maid Mary’s disconnection from our group, her soul wandering off—to her homeland?—even as she sat sideways at the table and bounced Baby John on her knee? Could I not
feel
Vinnie’s love for her doll as she fed it at a tea party given by bossy Anna Bartlett, or Ellen’s discomfort with being in someone else’s house even as she read a book, a small girl in a big upholstered chair?

A brisk tapping sounded on the steps outside our window. The doorbell jangled.

I gasped.

“What, Mamma?” asked Vinnie.

Ellen sprang up. “Father?”

Vinnie’s eyes widened. “Really? Is it, Mamma?”

I cursed myself for setting them off. “I don’t think so, dears. He has been very, very busy.”

They ignored my words, listening as the parlor maid, Catherine, went down the hall upstairs and answered the door: a woman’s voice. They visibly sagged.

Miss Fuller came downstairs wrapped in what looked to be a deerskin shawl hung with jingling cockleshells. Catherine followed after her, rubbing her hands in dismay. Manners dictated that callers stay put in the vestibule until the lady of the house agreed to have them in.

“Margaret!” said Eliza. “Please excuse our humble quarters.”

“No, it is I who should beg your pardon. I insisted upon coming down.” Miss Fuller scanned the room. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” said Eliza.

“I came to have a word with Frances, if I may.”

“Certainly.” Eliza raised her brows at me. “Would you like to chat upstairs in the back parlor? Catherine, please make sure the fire there is sufficient.”

“Thank you,” Miss Fuller said, although all of us knew that there was little danger of Margaret Fuller not doing whatever she liked. “I won’t linger. I plan to meet with a woman who arranges to send poor women who have borne children out of wedlock to respectable homes to serve as wet nurses. An ambitious program, if not tenable.”

We went upstairs. She waited until we were seated on the black horsehair sofa. “I have spoken with Mr. Poe about my interest in writing an article about his life. He was not open to it.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” I said.

“Until,” said Miss Fuller, “I told him that you would be his interviewer.”

Her audacity was boundless. “I had not agreed to that.”

“I know, I told him that you hadn’t. He looked rather disappointed.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “you confuse his disappointment with relief that his tale was not to be told. I get the sense that he’s a rather private man.”

Miss Fuller smiled. “See? This is why you are the perfect candidate. You understand Poe, odd as he may be.”

“We are two poets who respect each other’s work, that’s all.”

“Call your relationship whatever you want,” she said. “He has agreed to your interviewing him for an in-depth piece.”

“He has?”

“Are you taking the job then?”

“I don’t know. I’m surprised he would want this.”

Miss Fuller drew a coin from her reticule. “I believe this is the amount we had agreed upon. Take it—easiest money that you ever made.” She drew my hand to her, then placed a ten-dollar gold piece in it. “Poe expects you at the Astor House tomorrow at two.”

I frowned at the eagle shining on my palm.

“Why the glum face? The recognition you will get from writing this article will do you good. You do want to be famous for your work, yes?”

I had never voiced such. Was my ambition that apparent?

“Well, so long, chum, and good luck.” She turned to go, the cockle-shells rattling on her shawl, then stopped. “Oh, and if you want to write more features for the
Tribune,
I’d dig up all the dirt on him that you can. There’s something deliciously wrong with him though I can’t quite put my finger on it. I hope you can.”

•  •  •

And so it was that I found myself perched on the edge of a red satin sofa in the Astor House, watching a manly promenade of the powerful young lords of commerce and the idle spoiled sons of the newly wealthy. It was easy to distinguish between the two groups, even without noting the ivory-handled canes, monocles, and gold chains favored by the latter. One just needed to look at their shoes.

No-nonsense boots, buffed to a brilliant shine, peeked from the trouser legs of the commerce kings as they strode through the room. Those who had inherited their family’s wealth favored gaiters and soft kid pumps, as if their feet never trod anything more coarse than a Turkish carpet. I supposed, in fact, that they hadn’t.

I was conducting my study of footwear when a whisper rippled through the crowd. I looked up to see John Jacob Astor, the builder
of this hallowed hall of money, being carried king-like through the parlor on a sumptuous sedan chair. Although it was not a cold day, the old man was swaddled in furs of all sorts: fox furs, mink furs, lynx furs. Only his cross, wizened face appeared from within the pile of them. It was as if the old trader were drowning in the very commodity that had made his fortune.

“I think the bears and the beavers might be getting their revenge.”

I turned around. Mr. Poe was standing behind my sofa, his hat in his hands. The man moved as quietly as a wolf.

I stood, happier to see him than I had a right to be. “I was just thinking something similar.”

He smiled.

The color in his cheeks, heightened by a walk in the damp wind, brought out the soft gray of his eyes. I thought how beautiful they were within their lashes of black, and how intelligent, and searching, until I realized it was possible that he was perceiving my thoughts.

I fished in my reticule for my writing things. He came around the sofa.

“Thank you for agreeing to this interview,” I said, not looking at him. “Miss Fuller was quite insistent upon my writing an article about you.” I pulled out a pencil and pad of paper. “I want you to know that I objected. I did not want to pry.”

“Thank you for your discretion,” said Mr. Poe. “And I must thank you, too, for taking on this project. You are doing me a favor in writing about me. But would you mind so much if we walked outside? It’s a fair day, and I’ve been cooped up in my office for too many hours.”

“I would prefer the fresh air myself.”

“Of course you do. We think alike.”

We exchanged a smile. I staunched the happiness bubbling up within me
. It was a simple interview. Don’t be ridiculous.

Outside the hotel, we stood on the pavement with the carriages and wagons rumbling past us down Broadway. “Which way?” he asked.

At that moment, two large men carried Mr. Astor down the steps of his hotel. He blinked from within his mound of skins like a creature unused to the light. Horses were halted in both directions as he was decanted into a gilded carriage.

“To the park,” I said. “Before the bears and beavers attack.”

Laughing, we ran across Broadway in the hiatus caused by the preparations for Mr. Astor’s departure. We landed on the sidewalk before Barnum’s American Museum, on the corner of Ann across from City Hall Park. In the balcony above the museum marquee, a band blared its atrocious way through a festive march. When I put my hands to my ears, my shawl slipped from my shoulders.