Mrs. Poe (34 page)

Ah, this you’d have no trouble in descrying

Were you not something, of a dunce, my dear—

And now I leave these riddles to their Seer.

I stopped. I fought back the tears of happiness that had sprung to my eyes. “Did you just call me a dunce?”

He kissed me hard. “Yes.” He put his face next to mine to look at the paper. “Do you see the trick in it?”

“Edgar, you shouldn’t be working on tricks. What about tonight?”

He pointed to the first letter of the first line. “What’s that?”

“An
F,
” I said with a frown.

“Now second line, what is the second letter?”

“R.”

“And in the third, the third letter?”

“A.”

“Continue on in this fashion. What does it spell?”

I scanned down the lines. “My name.” I laughed. “Oh, Edgar. But what about your work?”

He took my hands. “I would rather play.”

“I would, too, but—”

“Shh!” He kissed my palms. “We are living a dream, and this is a dream within a dream.” He leaned in and gently bit my earlobe. “Now no one awaken me. I am about to make love to an angel.”

I sank back laughing. “I feel guilty about taking you from your address.”

“I have waited my whole life for this kind of happiness. Do you think I care about the Frogpondians?”

“We’ll have other chances. You may not have another at the Lyceum.”

He pulled down the thick white sheet, uncovering my nakedness. “Do I want this? Or to please the Froggies? What do you think my choice is going to be?”

We playfully sought each other, our fondness soon turning into sweet desperation. We didn’t leave the room for many hours that day.

I did not know then the price we would pay for a glimpse of heaven.

•  •  •

The waiter at the table d’hôte in the Tremont House, a long-lipped, somber Swiss, laid a plate with a hushed thud upon the plush linen tablecloth. Across the crowded room dense with cigar smoke and potted palms, a violinist was making his instrument sob.

Edgar scowled at my entrée. “Pigeon?”

“Quail,” I said.

“It looks like passenger pigeon. Only slaves and poor people in the South eat it. I’ve had my share.”

“It’s quail.” He’d not been paying attention when I ordered. His own order had been “the most expensive thing,” and he’d handed back the bill of fare without consulting it. He had been caught up in his own thoughts since I had met him after his presentation at the Boston Lyceum. It was to have been his victory dinner.

Now he ignored the slab of fat-marbled meat that the Swiss had
placed before him with the reverence of one making an offering to a god. “You could see their contempt on their faces,” Edgar said quietly. “Every face, set against me. They came prepared to hate me, a poor boy from the South.”

I sensed that I should not talk. I pressed a fork tine against the naked bird on my plate. It wept golden juice onto the floral pattern of the china.

He shook his head. “I should have read the poem I had written. It was brilliant. One of my best. But when I saw them staring at me, just wishing for me to fail, the words spilled from my mouth.” He glanced down at his steak, then, as if spying an enemy, attacked it with knife and fork.

I kept my voice calm. “Which poem did you recite?”

“I gave them what they wanted.” He paused with a speared chunk. “I recited ‘Al Aaraaf.’ ”

I lowered my utensils.

“Yes, the same poem I wrote when I was a boy. Only I called it ‘The Star Messenger,’ to make them think it was something mystical. They so love their transcendental tripe.”

“Why?” I could not keep the dismayed astonishment from my voice.

“To see if they could tell the difference between a child’s verse and a masterpiece. They deserved it. Inviting me up there to give a poem and then making me wait for almost three hours for Cushing to give his address. As if anyone gives a damn about his trip to China. I thought I had top billing. I would have never gone if I had known I would be treated like that.”

“How did they respond?”

“They sat there, vacant as rocks. I suppose Cushing was partly to blame. I nearly fell asleep offstage myself, waiting for him to finish.”

I had sat through many a long speech as a student at the Lyceum. We always clapped at the end of them, as much out of relief as appreciation. Even for the most boring speakers, there had been applause, if it were just lukewarm finger tapping. I could not imagine how stunned—or offended—they must have been to not applaud.

“Maybe they were in awe.”

He did not acknowledge me. “Then they made me read ‘The Raven.’ Will I ever escape that cursed bird?”

“They must have been delighted.”

“I wouldn’t know. I didn’t stick around to see. I walked off.”

I looked down at my oozing quail. They would ostracize him for rudeness alone.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I don’t need them. All I need is you.”

I tried to smile.

“Why do I punish myself? Pleasing the Frogpondians was my mother’s dream, not mine. I published ‘Al Aaraaf’ all those years ago under the pen name A Bostonian as if it would please her. I’m not fooling anyone—I’ll never be part of them.”

“You don’t have to please anyone.”

He laughed harshly. “And I haven’t, have I?

Why had he sabotaged himself in this way? My heart breaking for him, I slid my hand across the starched white linen and clasped his fingers. “You have pleased me.”

A gentleman approached our table—new money, I guessed, by the heaviness of the gold watch fob dangling ostentatiously from his pocket. We withdrew back into ourselves.

“Good evening, Mr. Poe.” He stuck out a hand. “Charles Wildwood.” A large gold seal ring plated the knuckle of his smallest finger.

Edgar wiped his hands, then shook.

“Love your tales, old man. You working on something else?”

“Always.”

He nodded to me. “Hello, Mrs. Poe.”

I felt my face redden.

“You ever get scared?” he asked me.

I laughed uncomfortably.

“ ’Cause if I was his pretty young wife, I’d be terrified. You ever notice how he kills off all the young beauties in his stories? You see one show up, you know she’s in trouble.”

“It’s fiction,” said Edgar.

Mr. Wildwood chuckled. “There’s nothing sadder than a pretty girl meeting her Maker before her time.”

Edgar stared.

“I shouldn’t be interrupting your dinner. You must get sick of people yammering at you night and day.”

“Thank you for stopping by.”

“Any time, any time.” Mr. Wildwood started to leave, then pointed a finger at me. “You—keep your head now, hear?”

Edgar did not bother to smile. After the man had left, he said, “Bartlett would have enjoyed him. He was a gold mine of Americanisms.”

He ate, but I had lost the little appetite that I had. I cared what people thought. I cared that I was not Mrs. Poe, but Mr. Poe’s lover. I cared that my poetry was valued only in its relation to Mr. Poe. He cared, too, what people thought of him, if he were honest with himself. Only someone without even a simple understanding of this world, or without a place in society, would not care if they acted outside the boundaries of decent behavior.

A chill slid down my spine. I had just described his wife.

Thirty

The reviews came in from the Boston Lyceum. They were scathing.

Mr. Bartlett read them at dinner the evening I returned home, after the children had eaten and been sent up to bed.

“Poor Mr. Poe,” said Eliza, after Mr. Bartlett had just finished a particularly brutal one. “What do you think he’ll do?”

“Keep writing,” said Mr. Bartlett. “He’s a big boy.”

“Oh, but to be called a fraud—that has to hurt.”

Mr. Bartlett salted his roast beef. “He dished it out to Griswold and Longfellow. Now he’s got to take his medicine from their people.” He looked at me. “What was he thinking, reading a poem that he wrote when he was a boy?”

“I really wouldn’t know.” I smiled as if my heart were not breaking for the man I loved.

Eliza let her gaze meet mine as she cut her meat. “Did you hear about his performance while you were in Boston?” she asked evenly.

“Yes.”

They both looked at me, waiting for further explanation. I gazed back, sick with anxiety.
Please do not question me. I cannot bear lying to you.

Eliza looked away first. She stabbed a piece of meat, then asked, “Russell, have you got Mary’s papers in order for her passage?”

He frowned, then nodded, mouth full.

“We’ve decided to let her go home,” Eliza told me briskly. “She’s been despondent ever since this summer—wouldn’t you say, Fanny? Surely you’ve noticed.”

I nodded, grateful for the change of subject.

She flashed Mr. Bartlett a sidelong glance before smiling at
me. “I do hope it’s not over a silly man. I can’t get her to talk about it, although she jumped at the suggestion that we send her home.”

“She’ll be better off there.” He cut another bite.

“Such odd timing,” said Eliza. “Mary must be the only Irish person angling to go
to
Ireland these days. Their poor are coming here in droves since their potato crop failed this summer. A good many of them are starving.”

“The crop will recover,” said Mr. Bartlett. “It always does.”

When Eliza said nothing, I asked, “Will Mary be coming back?”

Mr. Bartlett reached for some bread. “No.”

Eliza stared at him. “Yes, she will. I told her that she has employment here as soon as she returns. The children love her.”

“She’ll not be back,” said Mr. Bartlett. He resumed eating his meal.

Eliza blinked at him, then down at her plate before chewing slowly.

I pushed my bit of roast around in its puddle of gravy. The muffled clop of hooves floated through the basement window. From behind the door to the kitchen came the banging of pans being washed and put away. Treasured private images of Edgar and me together tumbled through my mind, as they did so often since Boston.

Mr. Bartlett spoke up. “Did Poe tell you that his partners made him an offer to buy the
Journal
from them?”

“No!” He had so wanted his own journal. He must be pleased. At a time like this, he needed good news.

“The scuttlebutt is that they want out.”

I swallowed back a gasp.

“Does this have anything to do with the Boston disaster?” asked Eliza.

“Yes and no,” said Mr. Bartlett. “I guess they’ve been talking about it for a while.”

“Why would they want to sell out?” asked Eliza. “Mr. Poe has increased the
Journal
’s circulation. You’ve heard him talk, Russell—it’s finally turning a profit. You would think they would want to be part of something so successful.”

Mr. Bartlett grimaced. “You and I may have reached a sort of peace
with him, but others are not so sanguine. Let’s face it: our Poe is a hard man to understand.”

“I wish people could see the Mr. Poe that we see here!” Eliza exclaimed.

“Maybe that we do see him here so much is part of the problem.” Mr. Bartlett glanced at me, then took another bite.

I felt my cheeks reddening.

“We cannot let gossip ruin
our
friendship with him!” she cried. “We can’t let it ruin it with Fanny.”

Her acknowledgment of my involvement with Mr. Poe reverberated in the awkward pause.

Mr. Bartlett could not meet my eyes when he spoke. “I agree. But people will talk—
are
talking. Poe’s partners are starting to think of him as a liability.”

But we had been so discreet. I closed my eyes in grinding shame. Had we really? The poetry alone had damned us. Our proximity at the conversaziones, his frequent visits to the Bartletts’—what had I been thinking? Of course everyone knew. I had let my desire for him cloud my good sense. I knotted the napkin in my lap as my stomach roiled. How long would it be before our time together in Boston was exposed and I’d be driven from even the outer edges of polite company?

“Have you heard from Samuel lately?” Eliza asked me gently. “If you and he were to come to some sort of agreement, it might stop wagging tongues.”

Until that moment, I had not adequately considered how greatly my own soiled reputation could impact her and Mr. Bartlett’s position in society. How could I have been so blind?

“I should look for other lodgings.”

“I didn’t mean that,” said Eliza.

“We aren’t turning any woman out into the cold,” Mr. Bartlett said brusquely.

Eating became impossible after that. I noticed, too, that Eliza had put down her fork. But according to etiquette, women could not leave the table until the man of the house had finished, and so we sat with our hands folded upon our skirts, glancing at each other as Mr.
Bartlett moved onto the subject of the likelihood of the Republic of Texas becoming a state.

The parlor maid, Catherine, came in when Martha was removing the dessert plates. “Pardon me, sir.”

Frowning at her intrusion into the dining room, Mr. Bartlett lowered his napkin. “What is it?”

I noticed she was blushing. “Would you like me to light the gas in the parlor tonight?”

Eliza spoke up quickly. “Just the oil lamps, please.”

Catherine nodded, then bowed out, shamefaced.

Eliza hesitated. With a glance to her husband, she said, “We had an incident with Catherine when you were gone.”

“I should have let her go because of it,” said Mr. Bartlett. “I still might.”

“Russell,” Eliza protested.

“She endangered the children. She endangered you, not to mention our home.”

“What did she do?” I asked.

They exchanged looks. Eliza drew in a breath. “I didn’t know how to tell you this, but Mrs. Poe and her mother came here Thursday afternoon.”

“Thursday?”