Mrs. Poe (33 page)

His dark-rimmed eyes warmed with gratitude. “Thank you. I needed that. Whether it’s true or not.”

His humility disarmed me. How did I resist this man? I turned to watch the skiffs swarming to the junk to unload it.

“I’d like you to come with me to Boston, Frances.”

I turned back to him. “You know I can’t.”

“Please, Frances. I need you. Do you not need me, too?”

I glanced at a couple at the railing nearby. The gentleman’s touch was resting on his wife’s—or lover’s—lower back as they sedately watched the boats. “Yes.”

“Then come with me to Boston. We can be as we should be there—as man and wife—if only for a night.”

I allowed myself the torture of cherished memories: The warm solidity of his body; the strength of his arms around me; his clean, sweetly leathery smell. I had not kissed him for so very long. To have him completely . . . I closed my eyes with a shudder.

“We are meant to be together,” he said, watching me. “I know you feel it, too.”

“I can’t, Edgar. It’s impossible.”

“I know I can succeed in Boston if you are with me, I know I can. I’m a different man with you by my side, a better one—a man I could be proud of, for once in my life. Please, Frances, don’t make me beg.”

His hopefulness crushed me. “What would I tell Eliza? What would I tell the children?”

“It would be easy. Your mother is still living there. You are going to visit her.”

“Eliza knows that Mother will not see me.”

“She doesn’t know that your mother hasn’t changed her mind. You can even try to see your mother while you are there, if it will ease
your conscience. Please. Just come. I promise”—he lifted my shawl upon my shoulder—“I shall make you glad.”

My body hummed with the thrill of his nearness. I raised my eyes to him.

“I’ll be at the Tremont House.”

“Edgar, I would be there, if I could.”

“Then you will come.” He bowed, then walked away, his footsteps crunching on the oyster shell path.

•  •  •

I spent a miserable night, trying to be still in my bed as not to wake the girls. I kept picturing Mr. Poe on a steamboat to Boston. I saw the paddle plunging and dripping behind him as he walked the deck, pulling out his paper and pencil, revising a line and then stuffing it back in his coat, the words eluding him for the most important address in his life. He needed me. What’s more, I needed him. My life was colorless and numbing without him. To be separated like this felt wrong and cruel.

The next day, tired and out of sorts, I scolded Vinnie for not wearing her coat and then hated myself for it. I could not listen as Eliza complained about Mary’s increasing waywardness: Apparently the girl’s growing homesickness was undoing her—that, or her male admirer. I found it hard to care at the moment if Mary stayed or if she went back to Ireland. As for writing—I could not pick up my pen. The guilt I felt over not joining Mr. Poe and the guilt I felt for seriously considering it immobilized me. By late afternoon I had decided to return a book to Miss Lynch, just to escape the house and my own tortured thoughts.

A fine drizzle glossed the yellow fronds of the ailanthus trees lining Washington Square. Shying within my hat, I turned the corner onto Waverly Place. There, marching beneath a large black umbrella was Mrs. Ellet.

I glanced around for an escape.

“Mrs. Poe!” she cried.

I looked over my shoulder with a gasp. She was up from her sickbed?

Mrs. Ellet’s reticule swung as she put a gloved hand to her horsey cheek. “Oh dear. I meant
Mrs. Osgood
. Why’d I say that?”

Only years of having been polished at the wheel of social nicety allowed for me to smile. “Dear Mrs. Ellet, good to see you.”

“I suppose I’m associating you with Mr. Poe.”

“A compliment. Thank you.” I smiled. I would take a page from Samuel Osgood’s book of the slippery.

She frowned, unhappy to have missed her mark. “We missed you Saturday at Anne’s conversazione.”

“Was it a good crowd?”

“The usuals. Mrs. Butler was there, in spite of her husband’s having served her with a petition for divorce. Few would talk to her—only Miss Fuller, who has no morals, and Mr. Greeley, ditto, and Miss Lynch, who, let’s face it, has no sense, although she is darling. For Mrs. Butler to provoke her husband to divorce—well, it’s unconscionable. Surely they could have just lived apart like everyone else. I was outraged to have to be in her company. Reverend Griswold claimed he was going to leave but didn’t. I think he thought you might be coming, because he kept asking everyone about you.”

“I thought he’d gotten married.”

“Evidently, it didn’t take. They were wed so briefly, I’d be surprised if he had time to take off his gloves. Is it me, or does the man have an odd penchant for hand wear?” Her eyes twinkled with what must have been her idea of charm.

I would not gossip with this woman, even about Reverend Griswold. “It was kind of him to think of me.”

She wrinkled her nose. “He doesn’t strike me as particularly kind. I’ve heard that he grew up poor—his father was a shoemaker and farmer. It’s the kind of mean background that one just doesn’t shake, no matter how many gloves one owns or poets one curries. But you would know him.” Her pendulous lower lip stretched in a greedy grin. “And how is Mr. Poe?”

When I did not respond quickly enough, she added, “Reverend Griswold says that Poe frequents the house at which you are staying.”

You damned, irritating woman. “He has. He has been helping Mr. Bartlett with a dictionary for months.”

One brow cocked upward in unconvinced acquiescence.

We nodded at a well-dressed pair of women passing by. The cold damp wind—so particular to New York—leached into my bones.

Mrs. Ellet allowed the ladies to pass before asking me, “And how is
Mrs
. Poe?”

“I really don’t know.”

She gave me a prissy smile. “You should.”

I glanced at my book, then beyond her head, sending the unsubtle message that I wished to go.

She gazed at me, serene as one of the cows in the doomed meadows beyond Union Square. “To tell you the truth, Mrs. Osgood, your name came up a lot at the party. You were being grouped with Mrs. Butler, as unfair as that might seem. You’ve done nothing to deserve it.” Her smirk, wickedly conspiratorial, said differently.

I reined in my fury. “Whatever is being said, I am certain that it would grieve Mrs. Poe, who is in precarious health. People enjoying what might seem like idle gossip are doing real damage to an innocent person.”

“What’s that expression?” Mrs. Ellet tapped her cheek as if thinking. “ ‘The pot calls the kettle black’?”

I blinked at her, astounded by her outrageous gall. “Where did you come from?”

She smiled. “Columbia, South Carolina. Or hell. They are pretty much the same.”

The rain began to pick up, pattering on my bonnet. “I must be going.”

“Of course.” She stepped aside for me to pass. “Oh, did I tell you, Frances? I met your husband. In the lobby of the Astor House.” She laughed. “I didn’t realize at first that he was anyone’s husband, the way he was carrying on with the Brevoort girl. I suppose it was nothing. One does have to take physical liberties when one is an artist, doesn’t one, getting the subject to sit just so.”

“Good day, Mrs. Ellet.” I strode toward Miss Lynch’s house. And I feared offending this sort of person by being with Mr. Poe? She was the offensive one. I was leaving Mr. Poe to the wolves in Boston to keep the good opinion of the likes of her. I was wrong to not have gone with him. I had let down the only man who had ever truly valued me. He nurtured my heart and my soul, yet I had not supported him in his time of need. If he failed in Boston, I would hate myself.

I left the book with Miss Lynch’s maid, then heavy with sorrow, headed for home.

My head bowed in the downpour, I did not see the figure sheltering on the Bartletts’ porch until I was at the gate. Rain dripped from his hat brim as he lifted his face. His cheeks were ruddy, emphasizing the grayness of his eyes. He had been in the cold for a very long time.

I ran up the steps.

Fat drops spattered on the rim of the porch as I ducked behind a pillar next to Mr. Poe. “I thought you had already left.”

“I came to realize that Boston would not be a triumph if you were not there to share it with me. So for all I care, the Bostonians can go to hell. I’m not going.”

I wished to throw off his hat and press his wet face in my hands. I loved this man. I would risk anything, everything,
my life,
to be with him. What good was it without him?

I brushed a raindrop from his cheek. “When do we leave?”

Twenty-nine

I lied to Eliza, saying I’d gotten word that my mother was ill and I had to go to her immediately. When she said, “Boston? Isn’t Mr. Poe there?” I had the nerve to tell her that I would not have the time to see him. I lied to my girls, telling them that their grandmamma was too unwell for them to visit her with me. I lied to the man at the steamboat office, when draped in a heavy veil, I gave him my name for the passenger list. “Mrs. Ulalume.” Where did I come up with such a name? Mr. Poe, in line behind me, had coughed when I said it. Later, on the steamship, I had burned with duplicity knowing that when the plunging and groaning of the paddlewheel stopped in Boston, I would join Mr. Poe on the wharf, and he would walk behind me to the Tremont House. There, still thickly shrouded, I had stood with Mr. Poe at the hotel desk and let the clerk write “Mrs. Poe.” By the time we reached our room, my lies hung from me more densely than my gauzy headdress. I could not raise my head from the weight of them as I stood by the window, waiting for the clerk to bring in our valises.

The boy laid our bags on our bed. Mr. Poe reached in his pocket for a tip.

“Oh, no, Mr. Poe.” The boy wore his blue livery proudly, as if it were the finest clothing he owned. It likely was. “I can’t.”

“You know who I am?”

“Who doesn’t?” He flapped his arms. “Nevermore! Nevermore!”

Mr. Poe held out a coin. “Take it.”

Reluctantly, the boy took it, then backed, grinning, from the room. “Thank you, Mr. Poe. Thank you. No murders tonight, hear?” He flapped his way to the door.

Mr. Poe waited grimly until he was gone. “I’m sorry.”

“You see?” I said softly. “You are already famous in Boston.”

A lamp had been lit. It threw shadows on the wall as we faced each other from across the room. A foghorn groaned in the distance; footsteps padded down the hall. I stared at him, trembling, through my filmy curtain.

Abruptly, he strode over and stood before me. We gazed at each other, my heart pounding so loudly I knew that he must hear it. When he spoke, his voice was thick with desire. “Woman.”

Slowly, he lifted my veil, then, taking my face tenderly in his hands, brought his lips to mine. I melted into his kiss.

I gasped from the pain of his withdrawal when, in time, he broke from my mouth. He swept me up and carried me to the bed, and carefully, as if I were something precious, he lowered me to the velvet counterpane. He opened my bodice, first gently, and caressed my swollen flesh, until driven by need, roughly, tremulously, he pushed back my skirts. I seeped with desperate fullness as he gazed upon me, freeing himself from his clothing. I guided him to me, and crying out as I was raked with excruciating pleasure, I received him, fully, at last.

•  •  •

When I awoke in the morning, Edgar was standing at the window with pencil and paper. He had opened the shade; the weak morning light threw his noble profile in hazy relief. My whole being swelled with happiness as I remembered the things we had done the night before.

He turned around. “Sleep well, Mrs. Ulalume?”

I sighed deeply, the movement making me aware of the exquisite soreness in tender areas. “Yes. Very. When you’d let me.”

He laughed. “Where
did
you get that name? Ulalume. It sounds absurdly Polynesian.”

I grinned. “I don’t know.”

He came over and sat on the bed. “I’ve got something for you.” He handed me the page upon which he’d been working.

It was a poem, written on stationery from the hotel. “Is this for tonight?”

“No. For you.”

“Edgar, you should be working.”

“Read it. Aloud, if you please,” he added playfully.

I blew out a sigh, then began, smiling.

“ ‘For Her Whose Name Is Written Within.’ ”

For her these lines are penned, whose luminous eyes,

Bright and expressive as the stars of Leda,

Shall find her own sweet name that, nestling, lies

Upon this page, enwrapped from every reader.

Search narrowly these words, which hold a treasure

Divine—a talisman, an amulet

That must be worn at heart. Search well the measure—

The words—the letters themselves. Do not forget

The smallest point, or you may lose your labor.

And yet there is in this no Gordian knot

Which one might not undo without a sabre.

If one could merely understand the plot

Upon the open page on which are peering

Such sweet eyes now, there lies, I say, perdu,

A musical name oft uttered in the hearing

Of poets, by poets—for the name is a poet’s too.

In common sequence set, the letters lying,

Compose a sound delighting all to hear—