Twain's End (5 page)

When she opened the wardrobe door, his crimson Oxford gown billowed out. How proud he was of that gown, wearing it over his white suit whenever he got a chance, to dinners in the city or playing billiards with guests. What was wrong with him that he always had
to make such a spectacle of himself? Why did he have such a burning need to dominate a room, whether it contained three guests or three thousand, and to suck all the love from everyone in it? He needed to take every ounce of love, yet never gave back a drop.

One by one, she pulled off the lids of the robin's-egg-blue boxes lined up in a wardrobe drawer. When she glanced up, she was met with her reflection in the mirror mounted inside the door. She stopped to inspect. A lavender half-moon formed a delicate depression under each eye. Dear Lord, her eyes were beginning to sink into her head. The rest of her facial flesh, while not plump with the juices of youth, was by and large firm for that of a forty-five-year-old woman, although her mother's out-pouchings were sprouting along her jaw. Overall, her features were even and pleasant. It was a handsome spinster's face. A handsome spinster. Was this really her life?

There was a tap on the frame of the bedroom door. “Knock, knock.”

Isabel flinched, then turned around. Ralph Ashcroft leaned into the room. “May I come in?”

“Ralph.” She patted her coral beads, composing herself. “The King is in the billiards room.”

“You mean the Aquarium?” His wry grin, with his neat red lips, only added to his attractiveness, and his English accent didn't hurt. Isabel told herself that it was just his pointed Vandyke beard she was responding to. Any man with one looked rakishly handsome, especially if he had such dark eyes and lashes. Age was on his side, too. He was thirty-three, twelve years younger than she. She never forgot that.

She resumed looking for a pin.

“Anyhow, it's you who I wanted to see.” Ralph came over. “Who's the new Angelfish? Let me guess—Helen Keller, although she's on the mature side for a Fish. It certainly wouldn't be Mrs. Macy.” He noted Isabel's frown. “I saw them getting out of the sleigh.”

“Don't be uncharitable, Ralph.”

“Uncharitable? I am thinking of your King. After all, it is my job
to protect his image. You would think that he would be aware of the headlines, of the whole ‘Girl in the Red Velvet Swing' scandal.”

“Oh, I think he is.” He had certainly studied Evelyn Nesbit's sulky pictures in the paper long enough, after making Isabel read the parts in the articles about how his friend Stanford White, the wealthy architect, installed a swing in his New York apartment for the girl to perform on.

“I do believe that Stanford White caused a greater uproar by having kept a girl since she was sixteen than by being murdered by her jealous husband five years later. Americans are terribly shocked by sexual urges.”

“And the English aren't?”

“If Mark wants to remain the most beloved man in America, he needs to stay away from the girls.”

She glanced at him, then resumed rifling through the Tiffany boxes. “His name is Samuel. And he does nothing wrong with them.”

“How would you know?”

“He just wants their attention.”

“He wants everyone's attention.”

“Don't we all?”

“Not really. Some of us are more selective of whose attention we want.” He leaned in as if to kiss her neck. She caught the light scent of his shaving lotion before she dodged away.

“Ralph.”

His smile faded. “Someday, not only am I going to kiss you, but you are going to kiss me back.”

“I wouldn't wait if I were you.”

“You know that I care about you. And I can feel that you care about me, too. Why don't you listen to your heart and let me in?”

She held up an azure-enameled pin. “What do you think of this one?”

He studied her. “I don't know why you deny yourself a chance at happiness, Isabel. But I think that someday you will allow me to treat you the way you deserve. Let me know when you do.”

She examined the pin as if its selection mattered to her. “Are you coming to meet Miss Keller?”

“And watch Sam flirt with her? No.”

“She's blind!”

“He isn't.”

“You are terrible.” She walked on even as her traitor body longed to stay.

• • •

“I'm ashamed to admit that we had inferior burglars.” The King picked up a cue stick, placed it on the table, and bent over as if to shoot.

Isabel stopped at the billiards room door, the Angelfish pin in her hand. She should listen to her doctor. She should go home, plan a new life, take up with Ralph.

The King lined up his imaginary shot. “They left a trail that even an amateur could follow. In fact, an amateur did find them—my daughter's accompanist caught them red-handed on the train out of Redding. Who knew that an ivories-tickler could have such gumption? You may have heard of him in the papers—Charles Wark?” The Macys shook their heads as Mrs. Macy spelled the question to Miss Keller. “Our family owes him a large debt of gratitude. I am sorry that he is accompanying another singer these days.” The King faked his shot.

Isabel stepped forward. “Would Miss Keller like her pin?”

The King leaned on his cue stick. “I take part of the blame for those bumblers wanting to burgle me. I gave them the wrong idea by calling this place ‘Innocents at Home' in an interview with the
Times.
I named it for my Angelfish, but I suppose I made us sound like easy pickings, like taking a cookie from a baby. When I was casting about for a new name, I had wanted to call it ‘Twain's End,' but that seemed to spook Miss Lyon. She knows my fellow freak, Halley's Comet, is coming around to claim me next year.” He tried to engage Isabel's gaze.

She wouldn't look at him. “I know no such thing. I thought it should be ‘Autobiography House.' ‘Stormfield' was Miss Clemens's idea.”

“Are you writing your autobiography?” Mr. Macy asked The King. Isabel allowed Miss Keller to remove the piece of jewelry from its box. She took it from her and fastened it on the younger woman's high collar then stood back, thinking to excuse herself.

“I started it forty-four years ago,” said The King. “I can't seem to finish it.”

“How does one write one's life story?” said Mr. Macy. “Did you begin with your birth?”

“I tried that,” said The King, “then realized where that was going.”

“To the present?” said Mr. Macy.

“No. To Twain's end.” He glanced at Isabel. He thought it was so easy to win her over.

Mr. Macy produced one of his silent laughs. “You put me in mind of some kind of horror story, where the fates keep spinning out your thread as long as you write about your life. Keep telling your life's story, and you live forever. You stop and—” He drew his hand across his throat.

Helen received his words from Mrs. Macy. “Don't you ever stop, Mark! Everything that comes from your heart is pure gold. The everyday man lives vicariously through you, the small-town Missouri boy who grew up to be the friend of kings and emperors. Everyone wants to be Mark Twain.”

He pulled on his cigar. “Even me.”

She dropped Mrs. Macy's hand and happily took his arm. “I remember when we met. I asked you how you chose your pen name. You said that you liked how ‘mark twain' was the riverboat pilot's term for safe waters, that it suited you because sometimes you were light and on the surface and sometimes you were—

Mr. Macy stepped in and put Helen's hand on his lips. “Deep.”

Mrs. Macy got out of the way. “Isn't dark the opposite of light?” she said querulously.

“How clever that ‘twain' means ‘twin,' ” Helen said in her hollow voice. “Mark Twain is Samuel Clemens's twin.”

“We're like the Siamese twins Eng and Chang,” drawled The King. “We may share a body, but we don't necessarily get along, isn't that right, Miss Lyon?”

Isabel looked away.

“Like Jekyll and Hyde,” said Mr. Macy.

Helen laughed. “Mark, can you tell that we have been reading
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
?”

“When?” Mrs. Macy sat down hard. “I haven't read it.”

Mr. Macy lowered Helen's hand to speak to his wife. “I've been reading it to Helen after you go to bed. She's had insomnia, and I wanted to practice my signing skills.”

The King stole away Helen and pulled her toward the billiards table, where a black kitten slept in one of the gold mesh pockets. He put her hand on the sleeping animal.

“A cat! Oh, Mark, you know how I love them.”

“I believe cats are the smartest creatures on earth. Unlike dogs, who will stay and let an idiot mistreat them, cats won't stand for it. They don't like how they're being treated, they leave.” The King rolled his gaze to Isabel.

She stared back. She didn't want this. She didn't want to go. She couldn't believe that he wanted it, either.

“Cats are very intelligent,” said Miss Keller.

Mrs. Macy heaved herself upright, snatched Helen's hand, and put it on her face. “I thought you preferred dogs.”

“I love all animals,” Miss Keller said, her face radiant.

“You can't,” said Mrs. Macy. “What about snakes? Or spiders? Or rats?”

Her husband frowned. “Annie.” He spelled something into Miss Keller's hand.

The front door slammed. A female voice rose from the foyer. Clara.

“You stupid bumpkin! What are those reporters doing outside?
I said to get rid of them.” Above Horace's abashed murmur, her voice grew louder as it trailed through the house. “Where's Isabel? If she's so damn good, why are those leeches still out there?'

Her footsteps stormed in their direction.

“I can't speak for all species.” The King hit another ball, setting it rolling until it tagged another with a soft click. “But I believe that man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.”

The party watched the door, save Miss Keller, who was smiling at Mr. Macy with the adoration of a lover.

The Critic,
June 1904

MARK TWAIN FROM AN ITALIAN POINT OF VIEW

Mark Twain's life is regulated by a system. All day long he is at work; during the good part of the night he strolls alone about the immense grounds of the villa, meditating and shaping in his mind the sketches which are destined to make future generations laugh—and to enrich his publishers. If you met him, you might think he was one of the ordinary people who are weary of life, and that he was turning over in his mind a plan for ending it once and for all. The man is occupied by a rapid procession of memories of all the things which he has observed on the varied stages of human life. Out of this confused mass of visions and recollections, Mark Twain picks out the most delicious comic figures.

When the amount of his work becomes oppressive, he has a secretary, an intelligent American girl, to whom he dictates letters and articles.

Mid-September 1889

Hartford, Connecticut

I
T WAS ONE OF
those damp September evenings in Hartford when the air thrummed with the urgent cries of insects and the sense of impending change. Isabel, twenty-five years old and, as their governess, as beloved by the younger members of the Whitmore family as their pet Newfoundland dog, had just been summoned from her book and her bed under the low slanted ceiling of her third-floor room. Down in the parlor, as the homey muffled clatter of dishes being washed drifted in from the distant kitchen, her employer, Mr. Whitmore, balding, brown-eyed, and slope-shouldered, plucked at his cuffs as he explained the situation. A gentleman couldn't make it to their regular Friday-night card game at the home of Samuel Clemens—perhaps she knew Mr. Clemens as the author Mark Twain? An emergency substitution was needed to fill out the table. He cleared his throat, then looked up at her sternly, his bristly graying mustache stacked like a beaver dam across his face. Would she come along with him?

Isabel agreed, secretly pleased that Mr. Whitmore recognized her ability to converse with gentlemen. Her own father had been one, distinguishing himself as a professor of classical languages at Columbia and as a successful businessman who owned one hundred acres of prime property overlooking the Hudson River, a mansion
in Tarrytown, and an estate on the Hudson called “Spring Side.” He had raised Isabel to do more than just marry well, although that was, of course, the ultimate goal. From the moment three-year-old Isabel stunned her father by picking out words from
The New York Tribune
while she sat on his lap at the breakfast table, he had been determined to educate her, her sex be damned, in the subjects that he so loved. He taught her Aristides, Solon, and Themistocles. He drilled her on Ancient Roman history. He transferred his love of Greek mythology to her so completely that she named her dolls after goddesses. His teaching culminated in his bringing her with him on the train to New York City. There he would stop at his club, where he would position young Isabel, wearing a bow that dwarfed her head, within a circle of leather armchairs and proceed to have his friends parry with her on which was the greater civilization, Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome. Then, after a brief visit at a Bleecker Street tenement, where she would eat cookies with a girl her age while he disappeared in a back room with the lady who lived there, he would take her to the university to watch him lecture.