The Flaming Corsage (17 page)

Edward poured sherry for the Fitzroys, a pony of very old port for Katrina, and a Scotch whisky and water for himself. They were all in the Daugherty drawing room, sitting near the windows to
harvest the breeze, should it arrive, rubber plants and ferns in lush leaf among them. The room’s personality reflected Katrina’s devotion to the revered dead. Geraldine, Jacob, and
Adelaide, in hanging portraits, and Katrina’s poet, Baudelaire, in a pen-sketched self-portrait, all stared down at the occupants of the room. On a table between French porcelain vases and
jade dragons the marble bust of the naked Persephone (a Katrina look-alike Edward had given her for their first anniversary) now seemed apt, chiefly as an adornment for the tomb of the
Katrina-that-was: full woman then, now suitable only for admiration. Jacob Taylor’s pendulum clock hung silently on the wall, permanently stopped at 8:53 to memorialize the approximate
instant when the burning stick pierced Katrina’s breast. And atilt on its hook opposite the mantel, a large gilt-framed mirror ensured that with even a cursory glance, one could monitor
one’s own or the collective image of this overheated quartet: all eyes, including her own, always on Katrina and her chamber of venerated memory, her sumptuous crypt of exhausted life.

“Maginn is late, as usual,” Edward said.

“When we’re gathered around his deathbed,” said Giles, “he’ll be someplace else.”

“Do you have him to dinner often?” Felicity asked Katrina.

“Now and then. Why do you ask?”

“I find him so coarse, rather low-class in his tastes. And he paws you if he finds the opportunity.”

“He’s tried to get next to Felicity for years,” Giles said, “hasn’t he, love?”

“He has. It’s quite obscene what he once said to me.”

“Whatever did he say?” Katrina asked.

“I wouldn’t repeat it.”

“Paraphrase it,” Edward said. “Give us a thrill.”

“It had to do with anatomy,” Felicity said. “Mine.”

“And a splendid anatomy it is,” said Giles.

“Maginn does like women,” Edward said. “He’s also tried his hand at Katrina.”

“Not at all,” Katrina said. “It’s all talk.”

“He went after you in our garden.”

“No, no, no. He was flirting.”

“What I saw was beyond flirting.”

“We are never sure of what we see.”

Edward let it go. She would forever deny the slightest dalliance. On Francis Phelan, she was vehement. Even Giles’s pitiful effort at a beach picnic (“May I touch your naked
shoulder?”) she dismissed as an excess of friendship (“Just a lovable, silly man”). Like flies after sugar. The veneration of sugar.

“Maginn is afflicted, like a man with a stutter or a limp. He can’t help it,” Edward said.

“When God was handing out social graces,” Giles said, “Maginn was elsewhere, trying to seduce an angel.”

“Aren’t angels sexless?” Felicity asked.

“That would merely present Maginn with a challenge,” Edward said.

“But he’s just a reporter, such a common person,” Felicity said.

“I used to be a reporter,” Edward said. “Is that your view of my social position?”

“You’re very different.”

“You really mustn’t speak about people as ‘common,’ ” Giles said. “You shouldn’t type people that way.”

“Not even if it’s true?”

“It’s snobbish. Not everybody has the good fortune to be born into money and social status.”

“Are you quite sure that’s good fortune?” Katrina said.

“Who is this woman he’s bringing?” Felicity asked from her severe pout.

“Melissa Spencer, an actress,” said Katrina.

“Oh dear,” said Felicity. “Isn’t ‘actress’ just another name for, you know . . .”

“Felicity,” Giles said, “you have no idea who this young woman is. She’s only eighteen and she’s going to be in Edward’s new play.”

“Oh I am sorry,” said Felicity.

“Don’t waste your sorrow on Melissa,” Edward said. “She’s a very talented young lady. I saw her in a Sardou play in New York, and I knew if she toned down the
melodramatics, she could act my heroine. She’s at Proctor’s this week in a comic opera, and so I sent her a script, and yesterday my producer came up from New York and we auditioned
her. She was perfect—articulate, with an open heart, and a beauty that’s hard to define. She commands one’s attention.”

“She certainly commands yours,” Felicity said.

“Why shouldn’t beauty be appreciated?” Katrina asked.

“It should, I suppose.”

“It should be cast in bronze, carved in marble like Persephone there,” said Giles, pointing to the marble bust. “Beauty is how we stay alive. It’s why I married you, my
love,” and he patted Felicity’s wrist.

“That’s a ridiculous reason to marry, Giles,” said Katrina. “I don’t believe that’s what drew you to Felicity.”

“I swear it’s true,” said Giles.

“I doubt it. People want an unknown they can embrace. Something mysterious.”

“Do you really think we’re so anxious for the exotic?” Giles asked.

“But of course,” Katrina said. “What else is love but the desire for prostitution?”

“Oh my,” said Felicity. “You don’t mean that.”

“She means prostitution as a metaphor,” Giles said.

“Not at all,” said Katrina.

“I’ve been dying to ask what you’ve chosen for dinner,” Felicity said. “I always love your menus.”

“We start with prostitute soup,” Katrina said.

“You do say the most outlandish things, Katrina,” Felicity said. “You like to shock us.”

“Do I? Is that true, Edward?”

“Offending people has always been one of the pleasures of the upper class,” Edward said.

“I left the upper class when I married you,” Katrina said.

“Perhaps you did,” said Edward. “I remember Cornelia Wickham’s saying I made you
déclassée.
In spite of that, you certainly brought your elite social
codes to the altar.”

“Cornelia was jealous that Katrina was the true princess of Albany’s social life,” Giles said. “I remember her coming-out cotillion, the most elaborate the city had seen
in decades. Cornelia looked radiant, and her dress, made by a London couturier who had gone on to design for the Queen, was the talk of the city. Yet every eye was on Katrina. All the men had to
dance with her, including myself. The women, polite as they were, were wretchedly jealous, and it got into the social columns. Cornelia still hasn’t forgiven her.”

“Cornelia was a vain and brainless ninny,” Katrina said. “I went to her cotillion determined to annoy her, and I flirted outrageously with everyone.”

“You became the belle of someone else’s ball,” Giles said, “a mythic figure in society. And Cornelia married bountifully and grew fat as a toad.”

“Is there something wrong in being fat?” Felicity asked.

“Nothing at all,” Giles said. “After I lose interest in you, my dear, you may get as fat as you like.”

“I will never be fat, Giles,” Felicity said. “And it may be I who lose interest.”

Footsteps on the porch announced that Maginn and Melissa had arrived.

At dinner, Maginn-by-candlelight looked less like Melissa’s escort than somebody’s ne’er-do-well uncle, with his waning, scraggly hair and mustache, expensive
but wrinkled blue-silk tie, and his trademark coat with velvet collar: a coat for all seasons. His shirt collar was freshly starched, but only when Edward was sure he was wearing the complete
shirt, and not just a dickey, did he give the word for the men to doff jackets. Edward and Giles, in their tailored shirts, ties in place, seemed aloof from the heat. Coatless, Maginn looked
steamed.

Edward suggested the women could follow suit in whatever way feasible, and Melissa removed her diaphanous tunic, revealing shoulders bare except for where her light-brown hair fell onto them,
and the string straps holding up her loose-fitting beige gown. It was clear she wore no corset, nor could Edward see any evidence of that new device, the brassiere. Her gown became the object of
silent speculation: would it offer the table, before dinner’s end, an unobstructed chest-scape?

“The play by Edward is so exciting,” Melissa said. “I’m so flattered to be asked to even
read
for the role of Thisbe. There’s such pathos in her. It’s
too good to be true, but it is true, isn’t it, Edward?”

“We can’t be sure about anything,” Edward said, “but you will have the part if we’re not all stricken by disaster.”

“There’s always the odd chance,” Maginn said, “that the play will be a disaster.”

“Oh no,” said Melissa. “It’s a wonderful play.”

“That has nothing to do with it,” Maginn said.

“Here now,” said Giles, “let’s not have any sour grapes.”

“Maginn is right,” Edward said. “Even great plays, and I make no argument for my own, are often badly received.
The Seagull
was mocked in its St. Petersburg premiere,
and this year a horde of benighted Irishmen rioted at the Abbey Theatre over Synge’s language in
Playboy of the Western World.
”

“I won’t hear of any disasters,” Melissa said. “Have you read Edward’s play, Mrs. Daugherty?”

“Of course. It was enthralling.”

“I agree. It’s gotten even better as I commit it to memory.”

“You’ve memorized it already?” asked Katrina.

“Rather a lot of it,” Melissa said. “Actors must read a play countless times, although I know some who memorize only their own lines and cues.”

“Some do even less,” Katrina said. “They bumble through and think it enough just to stand there and shimmer in the footlights. Have you known actresses who only
shimmer?”

“I’ve only been in theater a year,” Melissa said, and she turned to Felicity. “Does theater thrill you as it does me?”

“I rarely go,” Felicity said. “In New York I went once and found it extremely improper. Women in tights, that sort of thing.”

“Felicity is easily shocked,” Giles said.

“I saw Edward’s last play,” Felicity said, “but I didn’t entirely understand it.”

“What didn’t you understand?” Melissa asked.

“The words,” Maginn said.

“The play has a political theme,” said Giles,” and my wife doesn’t understand politics, do you, my love?”

“I’m not a simp, Giles.”

“Let Felicity speak for herself, Giles,” Katrina said. “Don’t be such a mother hen.”

“Those pearls you’re wearing are gorgeous,” Melissa said to Felicity. “I’ve never seen anything like them.”

“Giles gave them to me for our anniversary.”

“And your hair,” said Melissa. “I wish I had such beautiful hair.”

“How nice of you to say that,” said Felicity. “Your own hair is very lovely. I’m sure you shimmer beautifully onstage, and I’ll bet you don’t forget your
lines.”

Edward saw Felicity as not unattractive, a hint of the hoyden in her manner, and with a flouncy appeal, under-girded by that heralded anatomy. Her hair, a mass of thick black waves, loosely
plaited and gathered in soft coils to just below her shoulders, was truly beautiful, but neither bronze nor marble could rescue her long nose and small eyes. Edward also decided Melissa was
extremely shrewd, with the good sense to back off an argument about acting with Katrina, and with instant insight as to where Felicity was most susceptible to flattery.

Loretta came to take the soup bowls and Katrina introduced her to the table as “Loretta McNally, just here from Ireland. Cora’s youngest sister. Lovely Cora who died in the Delavan.
Loretta isn’t a servant. She’s like family.”

Katrina: reconstituting Cora through her sibling, replaying the psychic games she invented for that bygone girl: taking Cora to tea at the homes of social friends, teaching her how to sit a
horse, and the names of flowers and jewels, correcting her posture, her speech, coiffing her hair, giving her clothes, lifting Cora up from Irish peasantry into Katrina’s own shining
world.

“You’re arousing expectations that can’t be fulfilled,” Edward had argued.

“Nonsense. When she knows how to move she’ll rise.”

“All she’ll have is a mask of pretense.”

“Then she’ll be like everybody else.”

And which mask are you wearing tonight, Katrina? Princess of the social elite? Benefactor of proles? Beloved of cats? Iconic prostitute before her mirror?

Loretta was serving individual silver bowls of cold crab-meat on beds of cracked ice, with the pale-green sauce Edward recognized as his mother’s, created for the Patroon’s table.
Katrina, knowing the sauce pleased Edward’s palate, learned the recipe from Hanorah, then saw to it her own cook, Mrs. Squires, made it to Edward’s satisfaction.

“Let’s go back to your play, Edward,” Maginn said. “Why did you write it? I find its structure extremely strange.”

“You’ve read it?”

“I borrowed Melissa’s copy last night.”

Edward looked at Melissa, whose eyes were on the crab-meat. “That wasn’t for circulation,” he said.

“I cajoled her,” Maginn said. “I told her we were very old friends. I told her I was best man at your wedding and you wouldn’t mind. I know you’ve been working on
it for years. Was it a major problem, getting the form?”

“It took the necessary time,” Edward said. “You can’t rush it. When the matter is ready the form will come.”

“I prefer to think that when the form is ready the matter will come,” Maginn said.

“I was echoing Aristotle. Your remark is pure Oscar Wilde.”

“There is no pure Oscar Wilde,” said Maginn.

“You don’t like my play?”

“It’s so ethereal,” said Maginn. “Where’s your trademark realism? Or those cherished political themes?”

“I left all that out.”

“But without that the play flies off into myth, and artsy romanticism.”

“You faulted
The Car Barns
for being
too
political. ‘Radical art,’ you called it. Now, with no radicalism, I’m artsy. I can’t find a happy medium with
you, Maginn.”

“What is this play about?” Giles asked.

“It’s a somber love story,” Melissa said. “Beautiful and very romantic.”

“But what is it about?”

“It starts from the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe, Ovid’s version,” Edward said. “Two lovers, kept apart by their families, find a way to meet. Thisbe arrives by the light
of the moon, sees a lioness who has just finished a kill and has come to drink at a fountain near the tomb where she is to meet Pyramus. Thisbe drops her veil and flees, the lioness finds the veil,
mauls it with bloody paws and jowls, and leaves. Pyramus arrives, finds the bloody veil, and assumes Thisbe has been killed. Disconsolate, he kills himself with his sword. Thisbe emerges from
hiding, finds her lover dying, and also kills herself. That’s the myth. I alter it considerably. No lioness, no sword.”