The Flaming Corsage (23 page)

Katrina took two silk scarves from her bag, wrapped the tiara, pitcher, and cuff links (a set of rainy-day surprises for Edward) in one, the rest of the items in the other. She saw that, as now
packed, the deposit box would not accept all she wanted to put into it. She took out the family documents, their birth certificates, and the endowment agreement under which Lyman gave an annuity to
Edward, the deeds to the Colonie Street house and the Daugherty house on Main Street, and two plays by Edward she had copied and put here for safekeeping without his knowing:
Pyramus and
Thisbe
, which had since been published and no longer needed to be here, and
Lunar Majesty
, his play about a woman’s courtship, marriage, and early estrangement from her husband.
Katrina cherished this play for its compassion and insight—into her, of course—she the enduring heroine of all of Edward’s works. She opened the manuscript to a page and read:

“A bit overstated, Edward,” Katrina said aloud.

Then she closed the manuscript, laid it flat in the deposit box, arranged the diaries atop it, then put in the jewels wrapped in their scarves. She folded
Pyramus and Thisbe
into her
leather bag, closed the box, and rang the buzzer for Archie. He was waiting outside the door. Together they reentered the vault, secured the box in its place, and left the vault.

“I saw my father last night at the house,” Katrina said as they went out.

Archie stopped, looked at her, took off his pince-nez.

“I was standing in his office,” she said, “and I realized he was in the cellar. I went down with a candle and found him sitting on a stool by the pipe where the city water
comes in. The pipe was dripping water onto his shoulder. He was wearing his small spectacles and an old overcoat, which was quite wet. He was hunched over and looked very pitiful. We stared at each
other until I summoned the courage to say, ‘I would take you upstairs, Father, but there’s nothing up there now.’ He continued to stare at me, and the water dripped onto his
unruly hair.”

Archie looked away from Katrina, spoke to the floor.

“You know, Katrina, of course you know, that your father is dead. You were at his burial.”

“Of course I was, of course I know that.”

“I suppose these things can happen.”

“Father blamed Edward for Adelaide’s death, but I was the one. Edward was only doing what he knew I wanted.”

“You can’t blame yourself for such things, Katrina. You seem a bit skewed today, frankly. You should see a doctor.”

“I’m very clear on it, Archie. I truly am.”

Her voice was as bright as morning.

“If I hadn’t been what I was, Edward and I wouldn’t have needed to make peace with the family. If we all hadn’t gone to that dinner of reconciliation, Adelaide and my
father wouldn’t have died, and you wouldn’t have ruined your career with drink.”

“I have hardly done that, Katrina. You are ill.”

“It’s you who are ill, Archie, and I’m sorry I had a hand in it.”

“You’ll soon be taking blame for the weather.”

“Perhaps I shall. It’s quite uncanny what one sets in motion by being oneself.”

She stood up and extended her hand.

“Thank you so much, Archie. I must go up to the Hall now and see a bit of the dress rehearsal of Edward’s play.”

“Yes, I saw a notice in the paper.”

“I believe he’s written the tragedy of our lives. And do stop drinking, Archie. You’re such a good man without it.”

“You should learn to mind your own business, Katrina.”

“Yes, I suppose I should. But I have so very little business to mind.”

She sits alone at the rear of the orchestra
In Harmanus Bleecker Hall,
Albany’s premier
Theater

She sees only Act Four, Scene One

The text of the scene:

The City Club Tea Room on Elk Street (ladies only), summer, 1910. One round white wicker table, two matching chairs, one potted palm tree in white pot.

MARINA
and
CLARISSA
are seated at table with white lamp with white shade, a pot of tea, two cups and saucers, spoons, two small
plates, and, in the center of the table, a plate of small sandwiches made from white bread with crusts removed.

Both women are elegantly dressed in long, white dresses with colossal hats. marina’s hat is a garden of puffy white ostrich plumes.
Clarissa’s hat is a circular fountain of long, narrow white feathers.

MARINA
: Will you have tea?

CLARISSA
: If you please.
(Marina pours tea into both cups.)
You must wonder about my letter.

MARINA
: Not at all.

CLARISSA
: I thought it important to write you.

MARINA
: Did you? Why was that?

CLARISSA
: I thought we should discuss Miles.

MARINA
:
Did
you? Why was
that?

CLARISSA
: He was so odd.

MARINA
: You’re absolutely right. Shooting his wife that way. Then shooting himself. Odd.
(Marina sips her tea, holds cup in air.)
Miles suffered from an excess of fastidiousness.
(She sips tea again, puts cup down.)
He was appalled by its absence in others.

CLARISSA
: Miles was quite wrong about one thing. He thought his wife and your husband were paramours.

MARINA
: But it was
you
and my husband who were paramours.

CLARISSA
: We were the best of friends.

MARINA
: And now that’s all past. Now Miles is dead and my husband considers you a well-poisoner.

CLARISSA
: I understand your anger.

MARINA
: My anger faded long ago, replaced by other emotions.

CLARISSA
: I won’t ask what they are.

MARINA
: I’m not sure I could say what they are. They’re quite mysterious.

CLARISSA
: Your husband thinks me a well-poisoner?

MARINA
: He blames himself, but thinks you spawned the disaster.

CLARISSA
: How does he think I did that?

MARINA
: Through Mangan, who conceived the plot to expose your love nest, the most successful creative act of his life.
(She sips her tea.)

CLARISSA
: Mangan never forgave Miles for the fireman’s-wife joke.

MARINA
: Nonsense.

CLARISSA
: He was so humiliated.

MARINA
: Mangan is unhumiliatible.

CLARISSA
: Mangan is really quite sensitive.

MARINA
: Mangan lacks fastidiousness.
(Pause.)
He told me you were his constant paramour, even when you were seeing my husband. Dreadful to reveal such things.

CLARISSA
: Did Mangan say that?
(She sips her tea.)
He’s such a liar.

MARINA
: He did not seem to be lying.
(She proffers plate of sandwiches.)
Sandwich?

CLARISSA
: Thank you.
(Clarissa takes sandwich, bites it.)
Delicious.
(Marina takes sandwich from plate and smells it.)

MARINA
: Raw fish. How repellent.
(She puts sandwich on her own plate, wipes her fingers with napkin.)
Mangan has always envied my husband. They were like brothers once, but he envied my husband’s social position, envied his marrying me, envied his success in the theater, envied his
self-possession.
(Pause.)
My husband was the true target in the love-nest conspiracy, not poor, simple Miles.
(She lifts teapot.)
Tea?

CLARISSA
: If you please.
(Marina pours tea.)
Mangan told me he once had Miles’s wife. In a Pullman compartment on the train from Albany to New York.

MARINA
: I did say Mangan lacked fastidiousness, did I not?

CLARISSA
: But he does seem to know things.
(Pause.)
He told me you took a seventeen-year-old neighbor boy as the light of your life.
(She sips her tea.)
He believes there is no such thing as fidelity. “The fidelity fallacy,” he calls it.

MARINA
: He stole that phrase from a speech in my husband’s unfinished play. Do you know the rest of that speech? “No one understands the disease
of infidelity until it’s upon you. And then you are transfigured. Of course you have your reasons for what you do, but they are generally misleading.”
(She sips her tea.)
Quite an accurate speech, wouldn’t you say?

CLARISSA
: I’m sure you know better than I. Mangan also told me he had
you
, two days after the shooting.

MARINA
: He tried often with me, but never succeeded. I’m not as diverse as you in these matters.

CLARISSA
: You have such lofty airs.

MARINA
: And you are from womanhood’s lowest register. You linked yourself to my husband when he was a rising star, and now, after you’ve risen on
his back, you want to destroy what remains of his life as a fallen star.

CLARISSA
: I loved him truly.

MARINA
: You began as a frivolous soubrette, full of intrigue, and in short order you’ve risen to become a sublime slut. Do your sluttish things, as you
must, but don’t speak to me of love.
(Marina picks up teapot.)
Love is vertical. You are relentlessly horizontal.
(She proffers teapot.)
More tea?

H
E MAKES ME
cleverer than I am. He knows things I do not know about Maginn. I don’t know how he knew Maginn came to see me, and I doubt very much
Maginn had Felicity in a Pullman. She wouldn’t. Would she? Edward believes he knows the truth about my life without him. “I know of your dalliances,” he once said. “Of
course you don’t,” I told him. He will come to know some of what was. His writing is acute, and bright people will admire it, but the clergy will try to have the play closed. No one can
say such things publicly. Edward knows this. He is flaunting his play “You made me the villainous eater of broken meats,” he is saying. “Here then, see what raw fish such a man
offers you.”

He is obviously finished with that woman. I do like the well-poisoner line. I wish I had said it. He is giving a shape to the chaos that overtook us. What he said at dinner – when the
matter is ready the form will come. I wonder did he see me sitting in the theater? He did not come down. Perhaps he thought I would go backstage. No. He would assume I would not wish to confront
them all. He must not have seen me. Nonsense, if he thought I could not face up to people. I’ve recovered. I’ve recovered from everything. It’s depressing how total my recovery
is; as if the condition had not been serious. No one can know what the wound was like. No one would care to know. Even Edward could see only the blood, the scab, the scar. There will be a
photograph of my recovery. It’s depressing how easily we reconcile the unthinkable. I must let Edward know why I never told him about Giles, and Maginn’s doggerel. How to tell him? I
want no argument. Tell him also what no one ever knew about Felicity. But I saw it. Tell Edward these things now. Yes. Answer all questions. What was I supposed to do with my life? Was it correct,
what I did? Was it worth doing? Write him a letter. A letter, of course. When the matter is ready the form will come.

She left the theater and walked to the cabstand in front of the Armory, full of the memory of significant life on the Hall’s grand stage. There she had seen Caruso and
Pavlova and met John McCormack after he’d thrilled her with that old ballad
(“Oh! hast thou forgotten how soon we must sever? Oh! hast thou forgotten this day we must
part?”).
She had watched Duse and Maude Adams and Richard Mansfield and countless others play out their charades of life, she had danced with Edward on the false floor that covered the
theater seats for Governor Roosevelt’s inaugural ball. And this week Edward’s people, you among them, Katrina, will come to life on that enormous stage. And everyone’s legend will
grow.