Mrs. Poe (13 page)

Mr. Poe lifted it back in place. “They say Barnum hires the worst band he can find to drive people inside.”

My shoulder tingled where he had touched it. “I do believe he has found it.”

Our eyes met. I fought against the delight blooming across my face even as I saw his own similar struggle.

A man dressed in a garish checked suit and sandwiched between signs for Mr. Barnum’s museum stepped close and waved an illustrated guide book at us. “Would the Mr. and Mrs. like to see the latest attractions?”

I opened my mouth to correct him but found that I did not wish to do so.

Mr. Poe suppressed a smile. “Well, Mrs., would you like to?”

The sandwich-sign man, whose thick florid lips and narrow face gave the impression of a fish wearing a top hat, poked the program at me. “How ’bout it, Mrs.?”

I nodded to Mr. Poe. “Well, Mr., if it would tickle your fancy, it would tickle mine.”

“You heard the Mrs.” Mr. Poe put my gloved hand upon his arm as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Show us to the show.”

We followed the man into the museum, my inner self focused upon my hand on Mr. Poe’s arm, my body humming with excitement. After Mr. Poe paid our admission of twenty-five cents each, we found ourselves to be the sole patrons in a dim hall lit only by gaslight.

“Waxworks,” said Mr. Poe.

I drank in his touch as we walked along, admiring the pantheon of famous persons. We stopped before the wax bust of William Shakespeare.

“A smart fellow,” said Mr. Poe.

“I believe you bear a resemblance.”

He frowned. “It’s the forehead. And the curls. Only I hope mine cover more of my scalp.”

I laughed. “I was talking about your intelligent bearing.” I nodded to the bust. “Most Famous Writer of the Past, meet the Most Famous Writer of the Present.”

With his free hand he pretended to shake with the bust. “What advice might have you for me, kind sir?”

“It’s true,” I said. “You are the most famous writer in New York now—in the entire United States, I would say. Someday your bust will be here next to Mr. Shakespeare’s.”

“A frightening thought.”

“But it could happen.”

“It hardly seems possible.” He looked down at me. “I used to think that in spite of my hard work and a goodly amount of little-known publications, I was not a success unless I was famous. Only after I was famous would I really be alive.”

“Don’t all writers believe that? It’s as if we are dolls who only come to life when touched with fame.” I smiled up at him. “So is it true? Do you feel changed?”

He thought, then grimaced. “No.”

I sighed. “As I feared.”

He caressed me with a grateful gaze. “How well you understand me. I cannot say I have ever felt this from another person—I knew it the minute I met you. Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For brightening my life.”

We beamed at each other as openly as children. When at last we strolled on, the very air between us felt buoyant.

Beyond the busts was the first of several life-size tableaus. It was labeled “The Drunkard’s Family” but no explanation was necessary. Ragged wax children much like those from Mr. Poe’s street were depicted in various acts of mischief: breaking bowls, taunting one another, spilling flour. In the center of their frozen hubbub, their parents slumped at a table, asleep, the cause of their slumber evident by the jug marked with
X
s before them. Off to the side, with a gaslight trained upon his pinched white face, a young son lay dead on his small and narrow bed.

I could feel Mr. Poe’s good spirits recede. I wished to pull away from his arm but felt that I could not for fear of upsetting him.

At last Mr. Poe said, “They got it wrong.”

I waited for him to continue.

“It is the mother who should be on the death bed, with her little children being led to her side to touch her. At least, that is my recollection of such a scene. My father, who I had not known before, and whom I would never see again, was the one slumped at the table with the bottle. My brother, William, and I were being made to say our good-byes. I was not yet three.” I could hear him swallow. “My aunt made me touch my mother’s face. It was cold. No face should be so cold. My mother had become something inhuman.”

“I am so sorry.”

He drew a breath. “I do remember her. When she was alive. She had a glow about her, an incomparable joyous light. I wanted only to please her—” His knotted jaw spoke of his struggle to contain himself. “I regret that she could not live to see my success. Maybe then I would truly believe it.”

Only our footsteps and the rustling of my skirts broke the silence as we walked on to the next tableau. The scene was of a happy family, with aged grandparents reading the scriptures while the rest of the family gathered around the mother playing a pianoforte.

His tone was that of forced levity. “Is that us, Mrs.?”

But the spell had been broken. I saw us for what we were: two persons married to others, alone in a public place. I pulled away from him. “Tell me about the real Mrs. Poe. Your wife.”

His face took on a closed look. “Am I being interviewed now?”

I shook my head. “No. I ask you as your friend.”

“A friend wouldn’t ask me about her.”

“A friend would, and that’s why I ask.”

“Are we just friends, Mrs. Osgood?”

I did not know how to answer.

Agitated, I continued with him past wax figures of the famous Siamese twins, Eng and Chang, past a Chinese mandarin, a pair of giants, and a tableau of Christ’s birth and death. No one disturbed our solitude. It was as if the museum were open only for us.

We stopped at a grand staircase. I turned to confront him.

“What
are
we, Mr. Poe?”

“Is it necessary to discuss this?” he said. “Can we not just be what we are to each other?”

Offended that he had brushed off the very question he had provoked, I walked down the stairs in taut silence.

At the foot of the steps, a life-size looking glass loomed before us. When we took our places in front of it, our images grew to gigantic proportions. My eyes, large as melons, stared at my fantastically sized partner.

His monstrous reflection soberly considered mine. “I wrote a story once, ‘William Wilson.’ In it, the narrator is hounded by a fellow who is like him in every way in appearance and manner, even in name, except for in one disturbing way: his duplicate is evil. This bad twin dogs him every step of his life, behaving disgracefully, creating havoc, destroying William Wilson’s reputation as everyone mistakes the bad William Wilson for the good. Finally, the good William Wilson cannot bear it anymore. He flies into a rage and stabs his twin to death. Seized with the horror of what he was done, he stumbles away, then glances into a mirror. His doppelgänger, now pale and bloodied, smiles back at him.” He looked down at me. “I have not liked mirrors since I’ve written it.”

I would not take my gaze from our reflections. “This is not a tale. This is you and me.”

His amplified image attempted a smile. “Yes, you and me, Mrs., writ large.”

I was not his “Mrs.” His real wife was sick and helpless. And I had a husband, whom I had once loved with all of me, and I had his daughters, the lights of my life, who depended on me to behave, even if their father was a scoundrel.

I turned away. “I can’t do this.”

“Do what?”

Carry on this flirtation.
I searched his face. “Interview you.”

“Would it make you feel better to interview my wife?”

I wanted nothing to do with her. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted him to kiss me.

“Yes.”

“You shall then,” he said quietly. “Tomorrow, if you like.”

We left the museum soon after, the amusements having lost their power to amuse. We were standing on the sidewalk, letting our eyes adjust to the light, when the leading edge of a flock of passenger pigeons flew overhead. The birds soon darkened the sky, their million whistling wings drowning the din of the wheels on the cobblestones, muffling the pulse of the city. We parted under their disorienting shadow, going our separate ways beneath the endless whirring primordial wave.

Twelve

At last Mrs. Poe’s coughing spell wound down to a wheezy halt. She sat back and blinked at me, as haughty as a child playing queen. “Could you repeat your question, please?”

I took my gaze from around the room. Several weeks after my first visit, the Poes’ lodging was beginning to have a less temporary look to it. An ornately carved shelf had been hung and the books that had lined the walls now filled it. A hooked rug had been laid on the floor and the broken pane had been glazed. Even the dangling doorknob was now secured. It seemed that Mr. Poe meant to keep his family here. I thought he did not like having his wife living so near to Madame Restell’s establishment. Why would he choose to stay in such a dreary place, so far away from everyone?

I looked down at my notebook. “What was Mr. Poe like as a boy?”

“If you mean when he was a
little
boy,” Mrs. Poe said importantly. “Mother would be a better judge. I wasn’t alive when he was very young. There are thirteen years between us.”

Mrs. Clemm, perched on the edge of her rickety chair like a thief being interrogated for her crimes, deepened her permanently worried expression. “You must think that is a large gap in their ages.”

“Oh, no,” I said.

“It would be for most people,” said Mrs. Clemm, “but Virginia has always been very mature for her age.”

“Of course.”

“As for Eddie, when he was a boy, he was such a sad little thing.” The lappets of Mrs. Clemm’s cap swished against her shoulders as she shook her head, remembering. “His papa abandoned his mama when he was two, and his mama herself died later that same year.”

“Yes, he told me.”

Mrs. Poe gave me a sharp look. “He did? When?”

Mrs. Clemm seemed unaware of her daughter’s stare upon me. “All his Mamma left him was a miniature of herself and that picture of Boston Harbor. Such a sad, sad inheritance, poor little creature. I would have adopted him myself, pitiful as he was, but Mr. John Allan of Richmond snatched him right up from his Mamma’s bedside. Mr. Allan’s wife couldn’t have her own children, you see. I suppose she wanted little Eddie as a plaything. No wonder—he was a beautiful child, with black ringlets and big gray eyes. Just like my Virginia. You’d think they were twins.”

“The Allans must have doted upon him,” I said. Must Mrs. Poe keep staring?

“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Clemm, “I never met Mrs. Allan myself, but Eddie said she treated him like a prince. But then her bad health caught up with her and she became bedbound. So Mr. Allan sent Eddie off to boarding schools, both here and in England, when he was still a little boy.”

“Six.” Mrs. Poe’s mouth puckered in a babyish frown. “From the time he was six.”

I made a notation, wishing she would look away. “So Mr. Poe received a good education?”

“Mr. Allan wouldn’t let poor Eddie come visit him from school,” said Mrs. Clemm, warming to her subject. “Not in England, not in Richmond, not anywhere. Then, when Eddie went to college at the University of Virginia, Mr. Allan wouldn’t give him enough money to eat, let alone buy books. It was a terrible, terrible hardship on him.”

Suddenly, Mrs. Poe demanded, “When did he tell you about his childhood?”

I looked up, startled by her tone. “Yesterday. He gave me an interview. For this article—he must have told you.”

“He didn’t. I wonder why.”

I saw myself standing before the funhouse mirror with her husband. “It was very brief. Nothing worth mentioning.”

The doorknob turned. Mr. Poe entered.

Mrs. Poe watched me when he came over to kiss her and his aunt.
He patted his cat who’d come strolling out, then nodded in my direction, carefully avoiding eye contact.

“I was just about to tell Mrs. Osgood how you cheated in college,” said Mrs. Poe.

Only a twinge of brows marked Mr. Poe’s disapproval. Mrs. Clemm exclaimed, “Virginia, that’s not true! He gambled but he didn’t cheat.”

“I really don’t need to know,” I said.

“He was just a boy!” cried Mrs. Clemm. “He lost everything and more.”

“ ‘Cheaters never prosper,’ ” Mrs. Poe sang.

Mr. Poe stared at his wife, his face blank.

“Maybe you won’t want to put that in your article,” said Mrs. Clemm doubtfully.

“Why ever not, Mother?” said Mrs. Poe. “We’re proud of what we’ve become. When Mr. Allan died, he was one of the richest men in Richmond, but he didn’t leave Eddie a cent. He must be turning over in his grave to see Eddie become so famous.”

Mrs. Clemm gave me a crumpled smile. “Oh, Mr. Allan had the loveliest house! I saw it when Eddie moved us to Richmond. Moldavia it was called. It had big white columns in front and two sleeping porches in the back. There was no finer house in the—”

“That’s enough,” Mr. Poe said sharply.

Mrs. Clemm started.

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Poe said quietly. “I should not have taken that tone with you, Muddy. But I thought the article was to be about my writing.”

“Is it?” said Mrs. Poe. “I thought it was about us.”

Still avoiding my eyes, he said to me, “I’m sorry to have interrupted your interview. I only stopped home to retrieve a manuscript that I’d left.” He gave his wife a peck on the head. “Good-bye, my dear. Good-bye, Muddy.” Then, with a cold nod to me, he scooped some papers off the desk and left.

After the door shut, Mrs. Clemm said proudly, “He’s very busy.”

I nodded, feeling deflated by Mr. Poe’s aloofness. I could see now why he protected his wife. She was even less capable than I’d thought. I would never allow myself to be the cause of pain to someone dealing
with such a person. Did he not trust my judgment enough to know that I would never try to be anything but a friend to him?

“Eddie was always writing,” said Mrs. Clemm, whisking at her lap. “That boy came into this world with a pen clutched in his hand. He sold his first poem when he was twenty. He wrote it when he was fourteen, I believe. He’d sold several before he came to live with us in Baltimore.”