Fallen Beauty (5 page)

LAURA

My elation at my father’s consciousness was followed by despair. Had he heard what Nurse Miller had said? Did he know it was likely he would never recover?

“Father,” I said, moving to sit at his bedside, careful not to shift his broken body, though I knew he couldn’t feel anything. I kissed his stubbled cheek. “You’re awake.”

“I’m sorry,” he said in a voice thick with emotion and fatigue. A tear escaped his eye.

“No, I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have been alone. This never should have happened.”

“Don’t apologize. Please.” His voice faltered, and he began to cough. I could hear the efforts of his shallow, inefficient reflex. I pressed his side the way the night nurse had shown me to assist his body in what it could now barely do. My imaginings slipped to the insides of his chest, where I knew fluid accumulated where it should be moving, infecting his lungs with the poison of a slow death. I pressed harder, and the fit subsided.

“Why didn’t I die?” he moaned. “I wish I’d died.”

“No. Please don’t say that. I can’t stand it.”

“You must,” he said. “You must face it.”

I stood in a hot rage. “Damn Marie for asking Nurse Miller in front of you.”

“I knew before Marie asked it. You did too.”

He spoke the truth, but it didn’t make me any less angry. I needed a place to direct my frustration, and Marie was the closest target.

My father’s arm twitched at his side and he looked at it. “I guess that’s something.”

I sat back at his bedside. “See. The doctor said you’ll have limited mobility in your arms. With work, you might gain better control. Your spine was injured below the place where everything would have been shut down, had it been any higher.”

He didn’t respond and, after a few moments, closed his eyes. I’d exhausted him. I put my face in my hands.

Was this our new future? Just weeks ago I’d felt young, in love, passionate, invincible. I’d dreamed of shows and theater and costumes. I’d made a gold flapper dress with a headband, and bobbed my hair. Now I felt old and tired. My quick impulses of passion had transformed to fast tempers I had to suppress so I didn’t alienate Marie, my only family. My acceptance from the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts had come, and I’d dropped it into a box in the back of my closet. I couldn’t eat. I felt fatigue to my bones. This couldn’t be good for any of us. I must be healthy inside and out to help my father. I kissed him, stood to put on my coat, and left the hospital to visit the church.

As I passed under the tree outside my father’s window, the birds that had been hiding in its foliage took flight over the top of the building into the evening shadows. My gaze followed them until they were out of sight, and traveled down the side of the hospital to my father’s room, where a movement caught my eye in his window. I felt uneasy, and could not understand why. I thought perhaps I should go back up to the room to check on him, and turned to do so when the church bell tolled the new hour. I didn’t want to miss a chance for confession. I looked back up at the room and saw nothing, so I smoothed the goose bumps on my arms and continued to Our Lady of Grace.

•   •   •

T
he church was quiet as a tomb. Candles flickered in rows, changing the shadows on the portrait of the Virgin hanging over them, her face unreadable and distant. John Hagerty waited outside the confessional, along with Agnes.

The door to the confessional opened, and Dr. Hagerty’s wife, Caroline, wheeled herself out. She wore a black veil over her brown hair, and motioned for him to enter. He stood to his full six feet and removed his hat before opening the confessional door.

My mother had been a patient of Dr. Hagerty’s when he was just starting in the field. His wife’s bout with polio had left her unable to walk, and prone to melancholia. Though he was not yet forty, he wore the burden on stooped shoulders, and often reached under his glasses to rub his eyes.

Even younger than John, Caroline Hagerty looked years older, with a pale complexion and dark, troubled eyes. She didn’t often go out, except to church and confession, but could usually be seen in their front window, watching the motion of a town in which she could not participate. I wanted to thank her and her husband for getting my father to the hospital, but Caroline had already wheeled herself to the altar candles to pray.

Dr. Hagerty finished quickly, and when the door opened and he saw me, his dark eyes filled with pity. It made the wound inside me ache, but I went to him so I could whisper my thanks for his finding my father. He looked at the floor for a moment, turning his hat in his hands.

“How is he?” he asked.

I couldn’t answer without crying, so I simply shook my head. He nodded.

“I’ll get over to visit him soon. It’s just . . . hard.” Dr. Hagerty glanced at his wheelchair-bound wife and back at the floor.

I returned to my seat and watched him push Caroline out of the church, thinking that maybe I’d have to do the same for my father, if he should be so lucky.

When they left, I tried to examine my conscience, but Agnes entered the confessional, and my thoughts went with her. What would a woman like her say to a priest? Did she confess to gossip or judgment of others? Or were there darker sins she held in her heart? Was she so haughty and stiff because of past wrongs, or was she merely the product of a spoiled upbringing and vast wealth?

And what about Father Michael Ash? How could he truly separate himself and become a portal, a messenger of God? How could he remove his own human frailty and speak with authority? How could he not look at all of us and imagine the scarlet letters on our breasts?
Oh, there’s the adulterer, the thief, the gossip, the murderer?
Did his costume—the collar, the robes—transform him, elevate him above his human status?

When Agnes emerged, I glanced down at my folded hands, reprimanding myself for my doubt and distraction. Once her heels had clicked out the back of the church, I rose to enter the confessional.

I rubbed my sweaty palms against my coat and placed my hat on the floor with my handbag. Incense hung thick in the air, filling me with a strange calm in spite of my unease. I could see Father Ash’s outline through the grate separating us, the sharp line of his jaw lit in the light coming through the small high window. He sat still and stoic, and the slump of his shoulders led me to believe he felt burdened himself. I wondered to whom he made his confession.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” I began. “It has been two months since my last confession.”

Did I imagine it, or did he snap to attention on the other side of the partition? He tilted his head a bit, and though it was dark, I saw his eyes dart to the side and then away. He leaned closer to the grate, and if it wasn’t between us, I could have reached out and touched his face.

I sensed that he was acutely aware of me, Laura Kelley, and it nearly made me mute. Where was the impersonal moderator, the empty messenger of God? How could I make a good confession when the man Michael Ash sat just inches from my whispering lips? I thought about running away, but I felt trapped. This little box felt like a platform where I was naked, exposed for all to see. I covered my face with my hands.

Courage, Laura.
I thought.
You must do this.

When I looked up, Father Ash tugged at his collar and sat up straight, moving farther away from me, giving me space. Finally, he spoke. “Courage. Do not be afraid.”

He gave voice to my thoughts, and his words steeled my spine.

“I lay with a man, and I am not married to him.”

There. A simple string of words like footsteps on a path out of a dark wood.

Father Ash did not move. He had become the statue I needed him to be. I continued.

“Because of circumstances, I can never have him. And being with him has led me to lie to my father. My sister. Myself.”

Cotton seemed to be stuck in my throat, every word painful and foreign on my lips, but I had to continue.

“And it has caused a terrible accident. My father is hurt. Critically so. And I think God might be punishing me for what I’ve done.”

“You must not think that way. Sin is its own punishment. Bad things that happen are bad consequences of human choices. God is no puppet master. That is not love, and love is what He is.”

“But I love whom I cannot have. And God is not in that love because it is wrong.”

“The love is not wrong. The action of thought and body in the context of it is wrong. Tell me: Do you intend to stop your relationship with this man?”

I must have known this question would arise here. I’d been avoiding it in my mind and heart because it hurt too much to face. I knew there was only one answer I could give to set my soul at ease and begin life anew.

“It is finished.” Saying it out loud, in combination with my fatigue and my guilt, brought on tears. I reached into my purse for a handkerchief and wiped my eyes, suddenly sure I smelled my lover’s aftershave. I realized that I held his handkerchief, and thought I’d be sick.

“Are you sorry?” His voice held an urgency that made me feel more exposed than ever. And what a question. Sorry to have loved another and been loved so fiercely? Sorry to have lived such a night that gave me the heights of earthly happiness, and aroused a longing to create in my heart?

No, I was not sorry for that. It was agony, however, knowing that I’d been a party to my lover’s betrayal and sin. I couldn’t stand the thought of the guilt he must bear for breaking his vows, and how he would have to carry that with him, always. I was deeply sorry for that.

“I am,” I said. “I should never have let it happen.”

Father Ash did not speak, and I wanted to flee. How I wished to gulp the clean fresh air by the stream, surrounded by quiet trees and noisy birds with no concern for me or my problems.

“Then you are forgiven. Go forth. Sin no more. And try to put him out of your mind so you are not led to sin again. Pray the rosary and ask Our Lady to make you more like herself.”

I couldn’t believe that was all. One rosary for an affair, for deep betrayal and a broken father? It made me doubt the authority of Father Ash. An older priest might have had me flogged in the town square. Or maybe that’s just what I thought I deserved.

I said an act of contrition and received his absolution, yet when I left the confessional, I did not experience the usual lightening of soul. I still felt the burden of the affair deep inside me, unwilling to leave, tethering me to my lover in a way I did not yet understand.

•   •   •

VINCENT

I
dream I am on a stage with a vast audience of angry and shocked faces before me. It seems they all know my dark heart and hate me for it, and when I look down, I see my naked body heaving breathless before them, but my arms and legs feel so weighted, I cannot move to cover myself, or run off the stage.

Former lovers, men and women, fill the front row, wearing faces revealing a range of emotions from pain, to anguish, to bitterness, to spite, until their features blur and I can no longer distinguish one from another. I fear them because their wish to see me suffer is palpable, along with the bitter chill on my naked flesh.

I hear a sound behind me, but my head will not turn. It feels as if I am held in a vise, forcing me to look at the hurt I’ve caused, and my heart pounds harder because I can’t see who has come.

Then my shoulders feel the softness of a cloak in thick scarlet velvet, like a stage curtain. I begin to cry in gratitude for this kindness. Feminine hands fasten the cloak and smooth it over my body, warming me, but I still cannot see my helper. As soon as the calm arrives, however, I am again filled with alarm. I can smell something burning.

I jolt awake to the sound of a shout. The dawn makes its way into the room, where it is cold as a crypt from the open window. I jump out of bed and rush down the stairs and out the front door to find the source of the commotion and the terrible burning odor. I follow the sounds and smells to the swamp pasture, where my husband and three farmhands are fighting a blaze.

“What is this?” I shout to Eugen.

“Vincent! One of the men threw a match into the dead grass. Go and protect the house.”

“No, you need me here.”

He wants to argue but he sees that we need all the hands we can get. He shouts for one of the farmworkers to take the horse and alert the neighbors. I grab a broom and head to where the jagged line of fire reaches its killing fingers toward the sheep barn. The animals bleat in fear.

With the farm staff and the neighbors who come, we beat and stifle and suffocate the fire for six hours. We work in twos, cursing the fire and the fool who thought the pile where we’d heaped ten years of grass to dry was a good place for a match. He will be fired as soon as the blaze is under control. I hope he dies of smoke inhalation first.

I see my poor Eugen on one knee, clutching his chest, and I run to him.

“You must rest, Gene.”

“No,” he says. “I will be all right. I just have to take a moment.”

He coughs and spits into the dirt. His face is streaked in soot and sweat. My valiant knight.

Once the fire is contained, we all stagger back to our homes. Eugen and I wash each other in the bath and collapse into bed, where sleep does not restore us. Eugen’s coughing wakes me through the night, and reminds me of Arthur, who rests in a sanatorium, seeking recovery for his own wasted lungs. When I do sleep, my nightmares take the fire to the house and my writing cabin. I watch my poems burn, but I can do nothing to save them.

LAURA

I went to sleep that night and tried to banish all thoughts of my lover from my mind, but I could not. Skipping dinner left me nauseous, and I had an actual, physical ache in me. I half-wondered if my heart had truly broken. I pressed my chest, but flinched at the raw pain in my breasts. Why did they hurt so badly?

It took a long moment for the realization to overtake me, and as it did, I felt heat burning up my body.

“No, no, no,” I whispered, throwing off the covers and sitting on the side of the bed. I sat up so quickly, my head spun, and I had to close my eyes until the dizzy spell passed.

I’m just hungry,
I thought.

I hurried on bare feet down to the kitchen and opened the bread basket. The biscuits Marie had made yesterday remained, and I tore into one with my teeth. Before I finished a bite, I followed with another and chased it with a glass of water. I chewed and chewed, but I couldn’t swallow, and the bread seemed to expand in my mouth. Sweat formed on my brow and I began to chew more slowly, but the floury thickness wouldn’t move past my throat, and I gagged.

No, no, no.

I gagged again, and lifted the lid of the wastebasket just in time to heave up what little I’d chewed. I slid down the wall and my hands began to shake. Mentally calculating the last date I’d had my cycle, I realized it was long overdue. My father’s accident had distracted me from noticing. My stomach still felt flat, but I knew that if I was in fact pregnant, I wasn’t far along.

What could I do? It would kill my father to know. And what would happen when word spread? How could I have been so foolish?

I buried my head in my hands and wept.

Soon a new thought grew in me. Maybe all was not hopeless. Perhaps this child could bring us together. Perhaps this was what had to happen, and now he’d be compelled to leave the life he lived to join mine.

I prepared a letter for him, stating that we had an urgent matter to discuss, and we needed to meet as soon as possible. I didn’t want to put the news in writing, especially because I didn’t know for sure if it was true.

At the first light of dawn, I pulled on a dress, and wrapped a shawl around my arms. If Marie awoke and discovered I had gone, she would think nothing of it. I took frequent walks along the woods and waterways at all hours of the day and night.

The hem of my blue dress was soaked by the time I reached the cemetery. I’d set out through the field behind our shop, into the forest to stay hidden, and emerged along the stone wall at the back of the cemetery. In the corner of the wall farthest from town, a stone darker than the others marked the spot I sought. With a shimmy it could be removed and replaced, and made an excellent hiding place for love notes. I hadn’t been able to check our secret post in so long that I’d imagined a pile of unopened letters there. When I arrived, however, there was just one damp, folded piece of newspaper with a review of the Follies show. Next to it, in the margin, was his small handwriting. “Of all my life, the best night. Now and forever. With love . . .” I turned the page over to see if he’d written more, but that was it. I didn’t want to linger, so I slipped my letter in the hole, covered it with the stone, and hurried back the way I’d come, uncomfortable in my wet shoes, chilled from the morning air, and fatigued.

As I moved back to the safety of the forest, I opened the newspaper and reread his short message, unable to ignore my disappointment. That night had meant everything to me, now more than ever. And all I had from him after all these weeks was a hastily scribbled line that could have come from one of the talkies. He’d never been one to write long notes or love letters, but I felt certain that with our lovemaking we’d crossed into new territory, and forged an unspoken bond.

By the time I reached the shop, I had talked myself into a better mood. He had reached out after that night; perhaps he couldn’t put into words how the experience had affected him. After all, I couldn’t. Maybe he wanted to tell me in person, but couldn’t since my father’s accident. No, I knew that this must be for the best, and that God surely wanted us to be together.

I prepared eggs and toast for myself and Marie when she awoke, a breakfast for which I was suddenly ravenous. As I put the water to boil on the stove, a knock at the door stopped me. Marie came downstairs in her nightdress, and we looked fearfully at each other, sensing that good news didn’t come this early. I walked through the kitchen and out toward the front, and pulled aside the flowered curtain over the glass in the door. Dr. Daniel Dempsey, Darcy’s husband, stood there. Marie came up behind me and began to cry.

I swept the curtain closed as if I thought I could keep the tragedy away, as if I could end the act in the terrible play we were living.

Daniel called to us through the door. “Laura, Marie, please, let me in.”

Marie and I embraced each other and she buried her head in my shoulder. I used my free hand to let Daniel in.

“He’s gone,” I said, inspiring even greater sobs in Marie, but somehow in control of my own emotions.

Daniel nodded, his face dark and pained.

Nausea roared up so quickly, I barely had time to push Marie off my chest, and run to the bathroom. Daniel followed and placed his hand on my back. When I stood, I rinsed out my mouth in the sink and turned to face him. He looked terrible.

“When did he go?” I asked.

“I found him this morning during my rounds.”

“So he died . . .”

“In his sleep,” said Daniel. “Peacefully, by the look of him.”

I could hear the blood pumping in my ears and felt so overcome by fatigue that I nearly collapsed. Daniel held me up and led me to the couch, where he helped me to recline. Marie stood, then paced around the room.

“What will we do?” she whispered. “Whatever will we do?”

“He was just saying he wished he’d died,” I said, more to myself than anyone.

Marie gasped. “He wanted this.”

Daniel couldn’t seem to find any words.

“But I don’t see how he died so quickly,” I said. “Was it his lungs? Were they infected?”

“It is likely,” said Daniel. “Once you’ve dressed and had some time to yourselves, I’ll need at least one of you to come to the hospital for paperwork and to see him, if you’d like.”

I nodded, but I could not meet anyone’s eyes.

“I can’t,” said Marie. “I never want to go to that place again.” She broke into fresh sobs and came to me. My sister’s grief compounded my own, and I cried with her, pulling her into my shoulder and rubbing her hair. She clung to me the way she had after our mother had died. It was the closest I’d felt to her in weeks.

“I’m so sorry for you both. If there’s anything . . .” His voice trailed off. I looked at him and thought he might break down himself, but he cleared his throat and stood taller.

“Thank you,” said Marie, lifting her face, and wiping her tears with the back of her arm. “Thank you for coming. That was very kind of you.”

He nodded and started out the door. As he passed us, he laid his hands on our shoulders, and then left.

Marie and I held each other for a long while. Our breakfast grew cold, and the shadows on the floor moved with the passing time. My parents’ wedding picture stared stiffly out at us, offering no solace. People walked by, glancing in our dark shop with the sign showing we were closed long into business hours, and they must have known through whispers and deduction.

I was seized with an urge to lay eyes on my father, and helped Marie up to bed so I could go. I brushed her hair off her forehead as if she were my daughter. She pulled the covers up to her chin, and shivered.

“What will we do?” she said. “The books, the deliveries, the orders. Who will take care of us?”

“We will take care of us, each other.”

I left it unsaid that Everette would take care of her, and I would be alone, but not alone.

Marie had doubt all over her face, but she nodded, and turned on her side. I waited until she fell asleep before summoning the strength to go to the hospital.

My walk through town under the pitying glances of the people I’d always known, with the secret I now carried, followed by seeing my father’s lifeless body, was a miserable affair. Nurse Miller gave me a hug on her way out of the room. I clung to her a little longer than she must have expected, but I felt so alone that I needed to. She finally pulled away and turned from me, no doubt so I wouldn’t see her cry.

On the way home, I sought comfort in the familiar streets and faces of my youth, but the wind had picked up, and the sky threatened rain, so I passed very few people. Lights began burning in windows, illuminating the figures of those inside, and making me feel more separate from them than I ever had. I knew that as my shame grew, I would be further alienated, and that realization threatened to collapse me. I had no one to blame but myself, of course. I’d consummated an affair with a respected member of the town, a man I could never have. If anyone found out, the very fabric of our small society would be irreparably torn.

I passed Agnes Dwyer’s impressive Victorian on Kinderhook Street. It was set back from the road, and as with all its neighbors, tall trees protected its whitewashed facade from railroad dust. Twin oaks stood tall on either side of the front door, and flower beds bordered a tidy green lawn. Every window blazed with electric light. She had a staff to serve her alone. Her daughter, Darcy, lived on nearby Hudson Avenue in another charming Victorian that Agnes’ late husband had once rented out as part of his real estate investments. The house had been a wedding gift to Darcy and Daniel.

When I reached Dr. Hagerty’s row house, its dark windows contrasted it with the warmly lit homes around it. Through the gloom, I caught the figure of his wife at the window. Caroline was separate from the town in a way I would soon be. She was crippled and withdrawn, and I would be shunned—a fallen woman. I had always pitied her, but now I understood we would both be outsiders, and my heart broke anew. I hurried past her and didn’t stare, so she couldn’t see my anguish.

When I finally reached the church in front of our shop, the voices of the choir women singing “Ave Maria” drifted past the heavy oak doors. Under the shedding white petals of the Bradford pear trees lining Main Street, I stood at the foot of the stone steps, my hat in my hand, unable to go in and light a candle for my soul or my father’s, but hoping the sweet music would bring me absolution.

•   •   •

VINCENT

E
ugen returns from the post, just before the rain begins, with a pocketful of letters.

“A letter from your editor, Vincie. When will you send the poems?” He waves the thick envelope before me. “Also a letter from your mother, and from your sister Kathleen.”

“Did you read all of my mail before I had a chance?” I say in mock anger.

“If you cannot trouble yourself to ride to town with me, this is the price you must pay,” he says, not unkindly. He leans down and kisses me on the neck while he places the packages in my lap. “You should have come, Eddie. You’re shutting yourself up again. The world is full of things that it wants you to write about.”

“I’m writing,” I say. “I need silence. I need escape. I can’t be expected to dip into the physical world while inhabiting the landscape of my mind. It’s too jarring a transition to make.”

“I know,” he says. “But I saw something today that I wished you had seen so you could transform it with your words.”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw a woman standing outside a church, with flower petals falling over her like snow.”

“That sounds fresh and light and lovely.”

“But it wasn’t,” says Eugen. “She was the saddest woman I ever saw. She held a leghorn hat in one hand, and the other was open before her. I could feel her anguish.”

I stare at Eugen, suddenly seeing the image of this woman in her sadness contrasted with the spring day. “Go on,” I urge.

“She stood in front of the church as if she wanted to go in, but she couldn’t. And the music of the ‘Ave Maria’ spilled out the door, and it sounded sad. And a priest came to the door and looked at the woman like he wanted to have her.”

I place my hand over my heart. “Have her in the carnal sense?”

“Have her in every sense. It was worship that I saw, true worship. It reminded me of how I feel about you when you are inaccessible to me. And it filled me with great sadness on this spring day.”

I reach for his hand. “Poor Eugen. You go to town to escape my darkness, only to find more. We must find light for you, my love.”

I pass him my tumbler of Fleischman’s Gin and he drains it in a single gulp. Then he stands and smoothes his shirt and then his hair with his large hands. “You are my light, Vincie. Even when your candle burns at both ends.”

He turns with a wink, and proceeds to leave the room.

I can’t help but think again of the sad woman, and I want to have the vision in its whole before he leaves.

“Eugie,” I call. “Eugie, what did she look like?”

“She had blond flapper hair, and she was soft and round with full lips, full breasts. A perfect curve from her waist to her hip. Nearly as tall as I am. I’ve seen her in town before, but I can’t place where.”

I run my mind’s eye over her lovely form. I imagine she carries some guilt if she stands just outside the church but cannot go in. I feel a poem rising from the image and the feelings that have crept into my heart. I scribble impressions in my notebook, ignoring the spitting clouds and rushing wind, and hurry out to my writing shanty, where I can work without distraction.

My feelings give way to thoughts, which grow into themes through sentences, whose architecture forms a poem. The music of the “Ave Maria” makes a musician of my subject. In the fading, melancholic spirit of the poem, the flower petals change to autumn willow leaves, and the day gives way to evening.

It seems a sudden thing that the light is gone and I cannot see the page, but when I look up with my stiff neck and find the clock, I realize four hours have passed.

I am seized with a sudden longing to see this woman from town. To know her. It flashes through my mind like a revelation from Sappho. I think of how the words have come from Eugen’s mere description of her. What would happen if there was true intercourse?