What Is Visible: A Novel (23 page)

She folds my hands into my lap. “My God not here.”

“Talk about me?”

“Confess everything.”

“But only wrongs. I am not a wrong.”

“I’m full up with sin,” she writes, trailing the last word onto my wrist. I start to reply, but she won’t have it; instead she pushes my palms together in the attitude of prayer. She sweeps her curls across my face, back and forth, back and forth, the way I like it. She tries to stand, but I snare a ringlet between my fingers. She pulls away, and I know I’m hurting her, but still I hold on until she bends down and kisses me on the cheek, gently adjusts my shade. I let the hair uncoil from my finger, one ring at a time, and then she is gone.

Kate hasn’t come to me for two nights, and so I try to sneak into the kitchen after breakfast. Cook takes me by the arm and walks me back out immediately.

“Where’s your girl?” I write.

“Irish gone,” she spells and then brushes me away. I force myself to put one foot in front of the other until I reach my cottage. I pull the pillowcase stuffed with her hair from beneath the bed, and bury my face in it.

Generally, I stay clear of the gossip of the schoolgirls. I used to love it, but now that I am the eldest by far, it is beneath me to indulge their silly stories. But today at lunch, I do not close my hands, and they peck at me like chickens. I know, just as I know that the mash I’m eating is not going to stay down, that these dirty, little fingers will spell out “Kate.”

“A baby!” one girl writes, and in my other palm crashes the news that they threw her out in the street.

“Who?” I ask.

“Doctor,” taps one, and another adds, “Jeannette and Cook.” They write many things about my beloved that I can’t bear to repeat, even if they are mere opinions, not facts. The only thing that sticks is that we’re having a baby.

Two weeks have passed, and I keep my hands away from the gossip about Kate. I am sure she is the subject of much ridiculous speculation, given the nature of servants and blind girls, but words tossed into the air, even if they reach heaven, cannot hurt us. She is out there, out in the life of Boston, just beyond the glowing circle of my world here at Perkins. Her belly grows fatter, our baby grows bigger, and they’re both strong as cows. I understand why the Lord in His wisdom gave the baby to Kate instead of to me; certainly nature has ill-equipped me for motherhood. I think it takes about a year for babies, but the child will arrive with curling hair and my blue eyes, and Kate will bring her to see me. She will test me to see if I recognize the girl right away. As soon as I touch her, I will know that she is ours. I can wait for this day. I smile as I dust and clean and help the young ones with their reading and maths. It’s only a matter of time. I am so glad she took the music box and also the white straw bonnet with the lilacs. She wants to keep me with her always.

J
ulia was back. He’d known it wouldn’t take long after his letter; within two weeks of receiving it, she’d booked her westward passage across the Atlantic, macaroni and lawyer be damned. He was ecstatic to see his children, and yes, ecstatic to see her too. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed her until he gazed again upon that lovely face, that radiant oval he preferred above all others—still—and the fact that it did not betray any trace of sulkiness or resentment made her homecoming all the more perfect. That first night, once she’d gotten the children down, she shyly invited him into her bedroom, and he knew that his threat had won him back everything. At least for now. First, she told him the most important thing: she would agree to publish the book anonymously. It was, after all, not her own glory that she sought, but only to celebrate the inspiration of both God and her muse, Poetry. He reveled in the warmth of her embrace and took his rightful place beside her, on top of her, behind her, once again. As the weeks went by and she allowed him virtually unfettered access to the delights of her chamber, he found himself hoping that she would not get with child particularly soon, because although he’d wished for another, he wished for the continued sweetness of her company even more.

Two months passed in relative bliss. She worked on the edits of her book almost daily and took excellent care of the children, with help, of course. She had never really cooked or enjoyed any of the domestic duties except hostessing, but he forgave her that now. She was once again his true mate. She was so overtaken with passion one night that she broke down and cried in his arms as they lay in bed, and he comforted her like a babe, finding that he enjoyed her at her most vulnerable, those hot tears upon his neck. Then it happened again, a couple of nights later, a veritable flood, and this time he asked the cause, to which she murmured only that her nerves were bothering her. She had always been high-strung, so this was no great surprise. But then he came upon her at her desk, her head bent low over her pages, weeping as if her heart were broken. He was a doctor; he should have guessed it already! She was in the family way again; apparently, nothing could stop his hot-blooded course to fatherhood. He tiptoed out and left her to her womanly tides. She would soon be fat and happy again, he knew it.

But the crying and dark moods continued, and so he finally asked, and she said no, there was no child, nor did she want there to be one. Yet still she kept him in her bed, though he now found it more difficult to perform if she was weeping. And the little hiccups after the sobs, which at first he’d found endearing, now vexed him no end, each little pop a reminder that there was something he did not know. He woke several nights to see her standing at the window, hands upon the sill as if about to jump, her narrow shoulders shaking from behind.

Chev knew that Longfellow had been to the house several times to go over pages with Julia, but he had not stepped into the office once, not even for a greeting. It was clear that Longo, one of his oldest and dearest and his friend long before he became Julia’s, was avoiding him. He knew why, of course, but what kind of man would he be if he did not confront it? Longo was being weak, a puny snake in the grass, and so he called him out, sending a letter asking him to the club for a Saturday night, the way they’d done a hundred times, with others, or alone. Thank God, the poet was still upright enough to agree to meet.

The main room of the club was glutted with overstuffed sofas and chairs, but Chev preferred the smaller smoking room, where the furniture was burnished mahogany leather, the walls wood-paneled, and the lights low. Longo hurried in late, as was his habit, but his dark eyes were lit with their usual intensity and curiosity. He must know why his friend had asked to meet, so Chev got to it after the cordialities and a requisite amount of hobnobbing.

“You have been avoiding me, sir?” he asked.

Longo looked down, fingering the ivory buttons on his fine bespoke jacket—he’d had an excellent year for a poet, been able to retire from teaching at last—then met his gaze square on. “I know you well enough, Chev, to know that you are nettled by me, and that’s putting it mildly, for my support and encouragement of Julia.”

“You are as wise as you are wise.” Long sips of brandy on both sides.

“She is a delightful poet, a natural lyric sensibility and a tether between the earthly and the divine, which is unusual, especially in a woman.”

“I stand informed that my wife is a very unusual woman.”

“Yes, and I thank God that I am wed to a more usual one. Fanny is as simple and well-serving as they come.”

“And you have the six to show for it, while I merit only four.”

“Well, my friend, the stallion must do his part as well.”

This was his old friend, the old teasing, the challenge of tightrope-walking between high and low humor. And it was true that Fanny was his second, after his first had died of a miscarriage, and Fanny Appleton had taken seven years of courting to secure! How he had poked Longo mercilessly about that. Seven years’ worth of barbed pleasure, but always with the undertow of empathy, something that he also felt from his dear friend in the moment.

“So the poems are really so good that they merit a book?”

“Yes, the title one particularly.”

“Ah, yes, ‘Passionate Flowers.’ I heard.”

“Sumner’s mouth is as wide as his feet. But it’s ‘Passion-Flowers.’”

“A significant difference, I’m certain.”

Longo leaned forward, earnest for the first time. “She told me she has agreed to publish anonymously to placate you, and I believe that is all you can ask, even of a woman.”

“You would allow yours to do as much?”

“Mine cannot rhyme
hot
with
pot
, for which I thank my Benefactor every day.”

“You are a lucky sot.” Chev waited. “Rhymes with…”

“Ah, the wit entire.” Longo’s saber sharp as ever.

“You don’t think that any of the poems are of such an unguarded nature that they might lash me outright to the mast?”

“Will the wags guess her identity? I don’t know, Chev. I can’t say for sure.”

“Then there is cause for concern, you admit.”

“The truth is that under the dire emotional circumstances she suffers, I believe that you should allow her this one thing.”

“What circumstances? Surely she does not report her return to life with me as that horrendous.”

“I thought you knew. I thought Charlie surely would have…or Julia herself…”

“What?”

“Wallace, her friend. He committed suicide in Paris a month after her return. Slit his throat. Grisly business.”

For once, Chev was speechless. He reeled with possibilities. “Did he…Did the man do it because of Julia?”

Longfellow patted his arm. “How can one discern that deepy within a stranger’s heart? I have no idea.”

“So he left no note? Nothing to tie her to the scandal?”

“Not that I have been told. Wallace was known to have a melancholic nature. I believe you have nothing to worry about.”

“No,” said Chev, but he didn’t meet Longo’s eyes. “I suppose not.” Should he tell his dear friend the truth, that she wept all hours, both in his arms and out?

“Simply a worldly lady’s chats with a worldly man. Now an otherworldly man.” Longo was notorious for his puns, even at the worst of times, something that Julia enjoyed, but Chev fairly loathed. “Let’s move on to port and toast to your wife’s book. Can you manage that?”

Chev raised his hand for the waiter. “I can as long as she is never known as my wife.”

“To the private heart of a public woman.” Longo raised his glass and Doctor clinked a bit too heartily.

“That would be a far better title than
Passion-Flowers
,” he said.

“Ah, well, chalk that up to Mr. Wallace.”

“He gave her that?”

“If that’s all he gave her, we’ll be of good cheer. Now drink up, my man. I have a wife to get home to.”

They walked along the Charles, the road to the bridge over the dark river goldened by streetlamps every fifty yards. At the bridge, they embraced and parted, Longfellow across the river to Cambridge, that delightful house on Brattle Street, bubbling with domestic warmth and affection; Chev rambling, a bit drunkenly, toward South Boston, wondering what he would say to Julia when he returned, if anything. Maybe he would swing round the Back Bay to Sumner’s for a late-night shot of comfort. Charlie was always and ever on his side.

When he arrived home just before dawn, she was sleeping, this stranger, this woman, this wife, her hair wild, undone, both arms flung over her face as if in self-defense. He watched her from the door of her bedroom for a moment, the bile rising in his craw. He would not be bothering the lady tonight. Chev didn’t know if he could sleep, but he damn sure wasn’t going to try it in her mourning bed. Let her wake and wonder why, if she had offended or displeased him. Let her lie and dream of her poet, reciting gibberish through the bloody gash in his throat.

The next day he thought about mentioning his conversation with Longo, but couldn’t figure out how to bring it up. Then a week passed and she seemed to be getting better, a little gayer, a little warmer toward the children. He only caught her weeping once, as she climbed the stairs to their rooms. Her coming up, him coming down, and his eyes searched hers for any sign of the truth: had she really been in love with Wallace? It was not unheard of for a woman to cry over a friend’s passing for months, and Julia was a more sensitive flower than most. She never offered any explanation for her tears, nor did she acknowledge that he had suddenly left her bed. He tried very hard not to return, but that resolve melted within the month, and a bit sheepishly, he appeared in his dressing gown at her doorway one night after they’d thrown a small dinner party. He said nothing, his hand on the doorsill, until she looked up from writing in her journal and nodded, such a small movement that it was almost imperceptible. But it was enough for him.

He realized, of course, that he could simply read her journal; he knew where she secreted it, in the smallest hatbox on the top shelf of her closet. Yes, he had found it—that was long ago when she had banned him from her quarters the first time during the weaning—and yes, he had retrieved it again, actually three times, each time exploring its red-and-gold brocaded cover, fingering the tight slew of pages, flipping the tiny lock, which he knew he could break and then repair in an instant. Would it be worth it? What if he found the evidence of her love for another man that would throw their marriage into eternal damnation? What if the threat of divorce were forced to be made real? In the pit of his stomach, which irritated him more and more these days, he felt that Julia had not been physically unfaithful to him and decided that would have to be enough to soldier on with her. He himself had crossed that bridge long ago, and she was none the wiser for it, or at least he thought. If she had shared her heart, however briefly, with another man, then he would take that, must take that, and spend the rest of his life with a woman with only half a heart to offer him. And from Laura, regardless of how she sulked at him now, he would always have the other half. Many had fared far worse.