A Fall of Marigolds (18 page)

MY
father had an appointment with a colleague in Midtown at two o’clock, which he apologized for, but I was glad to kiss him good-bye fifteen minutes before the hour. I wanted a few minutes to myself to collect my thoughts and ponder in a snippet of solitude the proposal my father had spoken of before Ethan returned. I told my father I would send a telegram to him about the job by the middle of the month.

After he departed, I settled into the sitting area in the lobby with a view of the front doors. As I imagined myself living in Scotland for a year, traveling to the Continent, and caring for just one frail woman, a strange but welcome ache for the loss of my island fell over me: the ache of losing something that is comfortable only because it is familiar, not dear. For the first time since I’d made the island my home, I could picture myself packing my belongings and leaving.

If I was truly to let go of Edward, I needed to do so in as complete a way as I could, and yet the thought of doing this filled me with the same dread as when I had stepped off the island earlier that morning.

I was so lost in contemplating my life without the richness and sadness of Edward being in it, I was unaware that Ethan had entered the hotel and was standing before me, his hat in his hand.

“Did it not go well?” he asked kindly, when I lifted my startled gaze to his.

I stood quickly. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Not long. Did it not go well?”

“No. I mean, yes. It went well.”

“That’s wonderful.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Is this how you normally respond to something going well?”

“I am just surprised. I thought Father was going to try to talk me into coming back home to Pennsylvania. He didn’t.”

Ethan took my arm and we began to walk toward the hotel doors. “Then it must have been a pleasant visit.”

We stepped outside into the early-afternoon sun. “He thinks I need to leave New York.”

Ethan held his hand up to signal for a cab, but he lowered it. “Because of what happened to you here.”

“Yes.”

“And is that what you think you need to do?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. He found a post for me with an older couple moving to Scotland for a year while the husband is occupied at the university on a research project. The wife is in fragile health and needs round-the-clock care.”

“Scotland?” He sounded as if the thought of my saying yes were unthinkable.

“I’ve always wanted to see Europe. And I know I can’t stay on the island forever. I’ve always known that.”

“Yes, but the only thing keeping you on the island is you, Clara. You can leave it anytime you want. And you don’t have to go to Scotland to get away from it.”

There was truth in what he said, truth that I had long known. I was the one keeping me chained to the island. If I was going to leave it for Scotland, or anywhere else, there were a couple of things I needed to do. If I waited, I might lose my courage, especially if I went back to the island and let it lull me again into a dazed stupor. I knew that with Ethan there with me, I could manage them both.

“I’d like to drive by the Asch Building,” I said.

Ethan stared at me. “I beg your pardon?”

“I would. I want to drive by it.”

“You do know that just two hours ago when you thought we were driving past it, you nearly—”

“Yes, I know. But I want to try. It’s different when it’s something I choose. Do you see? When I thought we were driving past it and I hadn’t known we would be, I felt powerless. But if I ask to be driven past it, then I am in charge.”

He seemed unconvinced that I knew what I was talking about. “All right,” he said slowly.

“I need to come to terms with what happened between Edward and me. I need to drive by the place where I watched him die. And I want to find the cemetery where he’s buried. Just like you said we could. I want to do that.”

The confidence in my voice surprised us both. “Then that’s what we’ll do.” He tucked my arm in his and with his other hand he signaled for a passing hansom.

Once inside the carriage, Ethan told the driver to take us past the Asch Building.

The driver turned to us. “If you’re looking to see what’s left o’ the fire, you’ll not see anythin’. Been telling tourists that for a while. You can’t even tell.”

“Just drive past slowly, please?” Ethan said politely.

The driver shrugged and turned back around.

We set off, and in a matter of minutes Washington Square was in view, and the brick-faced tower that was the scene of my undoing. I reached instinctively for Ethan’s hand.

“Have him turn down Greene Street.” My voice sounded strained in my ears. Ethan repeated my instruc- tion.

As the building began to grow in scale, such that it filled my field of vision, the heavy weight that had been pressing against my chest all day suddenly blossomed like a rose in a hothouse. I could scarcely hear Ethan’s voice beside me, telling me over and over that I was safe, I was safe, I was safe.

The driver was taking it slowly, as we’d instructed him to, but out of the corner of my eye and as we turned down Greene, I saw him glance back at me.

“Stop here!” My voice came out in a rasp, like tattered metal in the wind.

“What was that?” Ethan said.

“Tell him to stop.”

This time my voice carried throughout the cab and the driver pulled on the reins.

As Ethan was asking if I was sure I wanted to do this, I stepped out of the carriage in front of the greengrocer’s store, at once assailed by the twin smells of earthy vegetables and remembered smoke. Ethan had jumped out, too, and I heard him tell the driver to wait for us. But I was only minimally aware of him joining me as I began to walk across the cobbled street, undaunted by the sound of a car horn and the tinkling bells of bicyclists.

My body seemed powered by some outside force as I stepped onto the sidewalk where the dead had fallen. It was bleached clean of human tragedy. All the red blooms had faded into remembrance and the handful of people who walked past did not even seem to be aware of where their feet were walking. I sank to the pavement and pressed my hand to the warm stone.

“I am sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

Ethan knelt beside me just inches away, ready to catch me if I collapsed into despair, I suppose. But I did not feel despair, kneeling there on an ordinary sidewalk in the heart of Manhattan. I felt only regret that we are so fragile. Our bodies are so weak. We are capable of feeling such powerful emotion, such that if the body could match the potency of what the heart holds, I could have flown to Edward’s side as he stood on the flaming window ledge, and carried him down.

Or he could have flown to me.

But the strength of what I held inside didn’t match the strength outside.

“I couldn’t save him,” I said aloud.

After a moment or two, I felt Ethan’s arms on my shoulders, lifting me up and away.

We walked silently back to the hansom. Ethan assisted me inside and closed the door. The driver’s eyes were wide as he looked back at me.

When Ethan was seated next to me, he turned to me and took my hand. “Do you still want to know where he’s buried?”

I nodded.

Ethan turned to the driver. “The main office of
The
New
York
Times
, please.”

The driver said nothing as he eased us away from the curb.

“Are you all right?”

It took me a moment to answer Ethan, but strangely enough, I was all right. I was still greatly saddened by what I had lost, but kneeling on that pavement where Edward had died had reminded me that he had been real. Our spark of a romance had been real. It had been sweet enough to enjoy, long enough to mourn.

“It was worth it,” I finally said. “I don’t wish I hadn’t met him. And I am glad I can say that.”

Ethan stroked the top of my hand in wordless affirmation. It should always make us happy to say that loving someone and being loved by someone is worth whatever price is paid. I felt myself relax for the first time since I had opened my father’s letter. The clanging weight in my chest had diminished to a wedge of unfinished business with no dread wrapped around it. Edward had told me that his parents had lived in New York City since they’d stepped off the ferry. I could only hope that they had buried their son here so that I could at last say good-bye to him, thank him for loving me, tell him how sorry I was that he had been on the ninth floor waiting for me when the fire broke out, and that I would never forget how he gallantly offered his hand to that young woman when the two of them were swept away to heaven.

We rode in silence, but with our hands clasped together. I was glad Ethan knew I didn’t need words in those minutes as the hansom brought us farther into Midtown. We stepped out onto Broadway and Ethan took my arm as we entered the
New York Times
building. He asked the smiling woman in the reception area where I could look up the obituary of a victim of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. She led us to a viewing room where recent issues hung on poles, suspended on a wooden frame. But the issue I needed was from farther back. She returned minutes later with several issues in her arms. When she handed them to me she said there would be no charge for the issues. She must have surmised I wanted the obituary because someone I cared for had died in the fire that the city was still talking about.

I took a seat at a wooden table and laid the newspapers down. They were dated the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday after the fire.

“Perhaps you’d like to be alone?” Ethan asked.

“No. You can stay.” I looked up at him. He seemed concerned for me. “I mean, I want you to stay.”

He took the chair next to me.

I picked up the first paper, unfolded it, and immediately felt hot tears spring to my eyes as the headlines, even on the third day after the fire, shouted the continuing horror of what had happened on the Saturday afternoon before. I scanned the index quickly, looking for the page number where I could find the obituaries and get away from the front-page woes.

But Edward’s obituary wasn’t among the dozens listed on the several pages of obituaries, many of them short death notices of the poorer dead.

I set the first newspaper aside, reached for the second, and again averted my eyes from the headlines on page one, which were not as large on the Tuesday paper after the fire. I found the obituaries page. The moment I turned to the correct page, my breath stilled in my lungs. Edward stared back at me; his smiling portrait pulled at my eyes. He might have been waiting for me all this time to come find him.

“There he is,” I whispered, though it must have been too soft for even Ethan to hear.

For a moment I sat there and looked at Edward’s black-and-white face, the shape of his nose and forehead, the set of his eyes, the curls of hair peeking out from the brim of his hat. I drank him in like a desert wanderer drinks in found water. I didn’t know I was crying until a tear slipped onto the paper and startled me. I flicked the tears away and suddenly there was a handkerchief in front of me. I turned to Ethan and saw that he held it out for me, a sad look on his face. I thanked him and pressed the cloth to my eyes, smelling the woodsy scent of Ethan’s aftershave.

Then I began to read.

Brooklyn Native Dies in Tragic Fire

Mr. Edward Brim, only son of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Brim of Brooklyn, died in a disastrous fire last Saturday afternoon at his place of employment in Manhattan, where he worked as a bookkeeper.

His remains were brought to his parents’ home, where the funeral took place Monday. The interment was at the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Edward’s kind and gentle nature made him many friends, and he was a loving son and devoted brother. A large concourse of friends and relatives were in attendance to pay their last respects at his graveside service.

In addition to his parents, the deceased is survived by a sister, Miss Margaret Brim; several aunts and uncles; many cousins; and his fiancée, Miss Savina Mayfield.

The handkerchief in my hand fluttered to the floor.

ETHAN
was silent beside me.

He did not ask, “What is it?” or, “What does it say?” He said nothing at all.

This was my first clue that he had already known Edward had been engaged.

Still, I waited for Ethan to comment on my stricken state, grab the paper from me and read the shattering words aloud. When he didn’t, I read the words again myself, and then the last four words, over and over.

I heard my voice whisper, “This is not possible.”

How could it be? It was unthinkable that Edward would have been the way he was around me if he were pledged to another. I could not believe that he was so heartless as to make advances toward me, eye me the way he had, if he’d been engaged to be married.

Unless . . . unless in my naïveté I had mistaken his genteel manner for physical attraction.

Was that it? Had Edward merely been showing kindness to a Manhattan newcomer, engaging me in conversation to welcome me, inviting me to the sewing floor as a polite gesture only?

No.

There was no mistaking his interest in me, the desire I had seen in his eyes. No mistaking it.

A stab of pain coursed through me, growing in intensity as I fully realized the truth. Edward could not have cared for me the way I’d cared for him. How could he? He was to be married to someone else.

I’d been a fool, but not the kind that mistakes simple kindness for amorous advances.

I’d been the silly girl who believed the one she loved, loved her in return.

There were no words to describe the ache of realization. It was so fierce and demoralizing, no tears even sprang to my eyes. In mourning, tears had been a ready salve for the ache of loss, but this,
this
was not grief. It was something darker and lonelier.

Ethan shifted in his chair, reminding me he was there. I turned to him dry-eyed, but I could not look him in the face. “You knew.”

“Dolly told me.” His tone betrayed that he’d been a somewhat reluctant participant in my learning the truth. I didn’t think he was looking at me, either. “She looked up his obituary some time ago.”

“When did she tell you this?”

“Yesterday.”

My mind conjured a picture of the two of them—in the scarlet fever ward, no doubt—heads bent in conversation about poor, unsuspecting Clara, duped, deceived, and pining away after an engaged man.

“She couldn’t bring herself to tell you,” Ethan went on. “She kept hoping you’d finally come to the city and find out for yourself.”

“Find out for myself,” I numbly echoed.

“Dolly said she’d tried hinting that you should find out more about Edward Brim, but it’d been almost six months, and, well, she didn’t think you ever would.”

“I know how long it’s been.” My voice sounded strangely emotionless.

“She cares about you, Clara! She thought you deserved to know the truth. Even if it was hard to hear.”

“The truth? Is that what this is?” I snapped. It did not feel like truth to me—nothing so virtuous and holy as truth. Ethan didn’t answer me.

“So you must have agreed with her. That I should know this,” I continued.

For a second he said nothing. I remembered then in those seconds of silence that when Ethan had suggested we find out where Edward Brim was buried, he had offered me several opportunities to leave the matter alone. Dolly had obviously had to talk him into it.

“Dolly and I were worried you might not ever leave the island if you never learned the truth,” he finally said, in a voice that both touched me to my core and raised my ire like a battalion flag.

“I had no intention of staying on the island for the rest of my life! Is that really what you both thought? That I’d be an old woman there, having never left it? You really thought that?”

Ethan paused only a moment. “No.”

“And yet the two of you connived to get me into this building, knowing what I would read when I arrived.”

Emotion that had eluded me minutes ago sprang to life inside me. I shot up out of my chair and it made a screeching sound across the marble floor that startled us both. I grabbed my handbag and headed for the doorway, away from Ethan, and away from that open newspaper that lay between us.

I passed the woman who’d retrieved the back issues for me and caught a glance of her surprised face as I rushed past her reception desk. Behind me, Ethan called out our gratitude as he raced to keep up with me. I burst through the double-door entry into the afternoon sunshine and the ordinary pulse of the city: trolleys, horse-drawn carriages, bicycles, men in suits, men in rags, women selling flowers, women holding parasols, street vendors, and newspaper boys.

The street scene was so utterly alive and apart from me, I came to an abrupt stop and Ethan nearly crashed into me.

“Clara.”

I ignored him, raised my hand to a passing hansom, which did not stop, and then to another, which did. I stepped inside without Ethan’s assistance, though he offered, and he slid in next to me.

“The pier at Battery Park,” I said to the driver. The hansom pulled away.

“Clara.” Ethan reached for my arm, and we were too close in the carriage for me to resist him. “I’m sorry! I thought it was the right thing to do.”

“In the middle of an office building in downtown Manhattan with you sitting right next to me? You thought
that
was the right thing to do?”

His raised voice suddenly matched my livid tone. “What way would have been better? Tell me! Sometimes the truth hurts, Clara. But it’s still the truth.”

Oh, yes, indeed, the truth hurt. I’d been a fool. Dolly knew it. Ethan knew it. And now I did. And so I said it out loud.

“You were not a fool,” Ethan replied. “Loving someone is never foolish. Edward Brim was the fool. He was worse than a fool. You have done nothing to be ashamed of, Clara.”

But in that very moment, at the second Ethan assured me I had done nothing I should regret, a new truth slammed into me: I had sent Andrew Gwynn off Ellis Island that very day, with the same crushing evidence of deception that Ethan had just placed before me. Andrew Gwynn was now somewhere here in Manhattan with Lily’s letter in his possession, the same letter that would have been incinerated unread had I not inserted myself into his affairs. Later today or tomorrow or next week or next month, Andrew would find that letter and read it, and he would feel as I felt now, only worse. I had loved Edward but I had not been married to him. I hadn’t spoken vows to him or shared my bed and my body with him or taken his name.

I had not married someone who was already married.

The bracing coolness of mourning would give way to the punishing heat of betrayal, and Andrew Gwynn would wish as I now did for the return of grief and its numbing chill.

“We don’t have to go back yet,” Ethan was saying.

I mumbled that yes, I did.

He sighed in near annoyance. “For God’s sake, Clara. Don’t disappear back on that island! He’s not worth it!”

As if I were concerned only with my own tragic little life. Me and me only.

My hand flew to the side of the carriage, though we were still in motion and the harbor was nowhere in sight. I wanted out of the hansom. Out of Manhattan. Out.

“Do you hear me?” Ethan raised his voice. “He’s not worth it.”

I closed my eyes for a second to gather strength not to punch him. “Do not speak to me of the worth of things,” I said evenly, when I was able. The words fell out of my mouth like slivers of shattered glass.

“I
will
speak to you of the worth of things,” he shot back. “Somebody has to!”

My eyes sought water, harbor, ferry, distance. Island. Why weren’t we at the pier yet?

“You can’t run back to the island and disappear into it.” Ethan’s tone had wilted into something more like supreme disappointment. “You can’t.”

“What does it matter to you what I do?”

“Can you really not tell?”

I couldn’t concentrate well enough to ponder why Ethan had any interest in me at all. I wanted nothing but the cover of silence and solitude to find a way to live with what had been done to me, and what I had done.

At last the ferry was in view.

When the hansom pulled to a stop I dashed out of it as if it were on fire.

•   •   •

THE
ferry ride back was vastly different from the morning voyage. I wasn’t clinging to Ethan with my eyes closed and my head bent to his chest. I wasn’t on the edge of jumping overboard or tottering to the deck unconscious. I sat, unmoving, on the same couch where I’d sat hours before. Likewise, Ethan didn’t have his hand clasped over mine and his gaze was not on me, but rather on Ellis as it grew in size at our approach.

As Manhattan fell away behind us, I became aware of an increasing sense of unfamiliarity as we neared the island, as if it had forgotten who I was, or worse, had closed its door to me the moment I’d stepped off it. A foreboding crept over me like one might feel when she has bet everything she owns and intuition is whispering to her that the odds had not been in her favor that day. I raised my head to look at the island as we neared the dock, hoping I’d merely had too hard a day and I would be welcomed again to my in-between place. But the sense that I had wronged a good man hung on me as the boat bumped along the dock and passengers stood, ready to disembark.

I did not rise to get off the ferry, which surprised Ethan. He stood next to me, waiting, obviously unsure what my hesitancy meant, since I’d dashed onto the ferry minutes earlier as if I could not wait to get back to Ellis.

“We’re here,” he finally said, though surely he knew I was aware the boat had stopped moving and nearly every passenger had stepped off.

He offered his arm and I took it. I stood and slowly took a step forward and then stopped.

“What is it, Clara?”

“Everything is different,” I whispered, more to myself than to mystified Ethan standing at my side.

He said nothing and I was glad he didn’t nudge me off the ferry as he had nudged me onto it. A moment later I summoned the courage to meet whatever reception the island was to give me. I knew even as we moved onto the gangplank that my in-between place was gone. The gauzy veil had lifted. When my foot hit the island’s welcoming shore I realized with shocking clarity that the island hadn’t changed in the hours I had been away.

I had.

I kept my arm on Ethan’s, and as we made our way through the busy ferry house, I sensed he didn’t know what to do with me. Offer to sit with me, take me back to my room, leave me there at the ferry house?

I didn’t know what to do with myself either. There seemed to be no place of sanctuary for me now.

“I don’t know where to go,” I said.

“Coffee?”

His one-word invitation to have a cup of coffee with me sounded polite but hesitant, almost as if he wanted to be alone, or at least away from me. I had disappointed him somehow.

I nodded and we made our way to island three.

As we stepped over the threshold of the main building, my mind recalled that it was at this very place where I had first seen Andrew Gwynn, with Lily’s scarf embracing his neck. A pang of sadness shot through me. Mrs. Crowley stood at the reception desk with a ledger in her hands, talking to another nurse.

“Back so soon, then?” She arched an eyebrow in surprise as she noted that Ethan was right beside me.

I nodded.

“I gave you the rest of the day off, Nurse Wood. Did you not tell your father that?”

“He had a meeting to attend after our lunch.” I continued to walk, not wishing to engage in a lengthy conversation about why I had returned early.

“Wait,” Mrs. Crowley called out. “I have something for you.”

I turned back to her with effort. My thoughts were far away from my duties as a nurse in her charge.

“That Mr. Gwynn in the scarlet fever ward who was discharged today? He was looking for you before he left.”

My heart seemed to thud to a standstill in my chest. “He was?”

Mrs. Crowley bent forward and opened a desk drawer. “He insisted I give this to you, though I must say, Nurse Wood, I do not think a personal note from a patient is a good idea. Or gifts.”

“Gifts?” I whispered.

Mrs. Crowley straightened as she pulled something from the drawer. In her hands was the tissue-wrapped package that contained Lily’s scarf, the ribbon that kept its secrets still tied.