Chapter 14

Chapter 14

The university is nothing like I expected. Thomas Jefferson has just opened it, and it’s in every level of chaos, lacking all features an antiquated college grows to have with time and test. Even though my room is bare and small, with only one tiny window for air or a reprieve from the heat, I have underestimated the need for aid. All other spoiled boys bring a local slave to attend them. There is no time to find your meals, wash your laundry, shine your shoes, tend your room, and purchase supplies. I run myself ragged caring for myself while I look on jealously at the other cared-for men. Classes take up our days until supper and studying takes up most of our nights. All except those who run about drinking, gambling to all hours, and picking fights with whoever looks at them too long. It’s like being in the midst of war, the way the campus police patrol the grounds, finding men in skirmishes and ‘noble’ duels with each other, and even teachers, brandishing broken bottles, knives, and all too frequently, their own handguns.

I write to Mr. Allan weekly, first in hopes that stating all the terrible conditions will prompt him into more assistance, but after replies stating how these trials will make me stronger, I directly beg for aid. I cease writing him all together when he writes on the other side of my very same paper—too cheap to send me a piece of his own stationary—“Expect the usual amount of allowance. Mrs. Allan desires her love to Edgar.”

But what upsets me the most is the lack of delicate pink stationary with Elmira’s monogram in my postbox. I write to her daily as promised. I push my studies far into the night to tell her how much I miss her and how much I’m thinking of her. I dream of the pink envelopes, with the fragrance of gardenia, appearing, delayed from some horrible backlog of letters piling up in the university’s new mail system, but they never come.

The doors shut to the white Episcopal church of my home, shaking the now-empty town houses with its echoing force. A lone raven circles above the church.

Why are they locking me out?

I run to catch the door, but hear the ‘keep out’ of the latch being drawn. I rap on the door, but no one wants me in. Bridal music escapes from the stain glass windows and I rush to see if a side door remains unbarred. The door latch lifts and opens with little resistance and I sneak through the preacher’s entrance to peer in to see whom the virginal music plays for.

My heart sputters when I see her face, edged with a bit a lace tied in her hair. She glows there in her mother’s dress, laced and white…so very white. A taller man, I can’t see his face, holds her hand, her dainty, warm hand, in his and she looks only upon him. Elmira’s father stands behind her, with her fish-faced brother, staring straight at me. His pinched-face spreads with a pain-loving smile, watching me see another man stand where I should be. The only thought much worse is to know what will come later.

The promise she promised me. Not the world, but to me. That promise she can never keep.

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In my anguish, made more frantic by distance and the inability to ask what is wrong, I write twice, sometimes, three times a day. Postage costs drain any extra funds for proper meals. I grow so lean, from my forced habit of suppawn and preserves my pants won’t stay up without a belt. It’s all I can do to get to our first school break and Mr. Allan at least gives me the money to return home. I embark at dawn, under a red sky, the three padded seats of the coach fill quickly with boys venturing home. I’m lucky to get the last interior seat, while the boy behind me is offered a seat on the box with the driver. We don’t mind how tight we fit since the window must be left open for ventilation, and we appreciate the warmth of our snug bodies, even though some do not groom as much as I would hope. The carriage becomes thick with the fog that is expelled with every breath and no one has thought to bring a bottle to pass around. The journey will be too long.

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I ride up to the white, columned estate on a cool December day and, not wanting to delay my reunion with Elmira for a second, I run up the hundreds of stone steps to the mansion with my impeccable report in hand. I’m instantly made jealous by the couples already coming out for a stroll on the plantation, as I rush inside. An orchestra plays a minuet (why that outdated, hauntingly happy song?) as the slaves rush to and fro, setting the tables and fetching refreshments for the guests. I hear her everywhere and keep spinning trying to find where her laughter hails from. Finally I spot her across their ballroom, in a close group, and recognize her small, delicate form under the bustles, epaulets, and fringe of a Regency ball gown that hides the shape I could make a dress for from memory. I shuffle through the crowd while keeping my eyes on her. Something feels far too familiar.

“Edgar, I must speak to you,” someone calls out, causing the couples around me to stir at the discord. I turn to the voice and Elmira’s father walks up with pity painted on his face.

“What is the matter?” I say, wanting to wipe that pity from his face.

Every movement seems remembered, every word an echo.

He glances away from my eyes. “Let us discuss this outside.”

A warning begins in my pulse.

I wonder why he would want to make me leave the room and immediately turn to look at Elmira and, in one moment, I know. In that moment, my heart tears and spills its useless contents into the pit of my stomach, causing an immense rush of nausea. There, Elmira laughs beside a stuffy, puffed-up man who stands far too close to her side. Without thinking I spin away from Mr. Royster, pushing faceless people out of my way. As I make a scene, Elmira intensifies the nausea more by turning away from me. Mr. Royster tries to pull me away, but it’s like a mouse pulling on my coat sleeve.

“Honora!—I mean, Elmira.”

Why did I call her that?

The rest comes out pathetically choked. “Can we please go outside to talk?”

She just shakes her head, unable to look me in the eyes. An embarrassed blush begins to show, as anger rises in her eyes.

I reach out to touch her arm, but her brother, the one with the face of a carp, grabs hold my arm and interrupts my contact as though I’m some sort of leper, contaminating his property. The man Elmira hides beside stares at me with blank confusion.

I stand there like a fool and ask, “But you are promised to me?”

Her empty-eyed brother laughs at my pathetic behavior, and I can’t move my feet. To get out of the room, I have to turn my despair into anger, or I fear that I will never move from that spot. I look at the most beautiful thing in my world, as she easily, oh, so easily, averts her eyes. Deciding not to see me anymore, she pushes me out of existence, just like that.

“I can’t withstand this again,” I cry.

She says, “Again?”

Afraid I will forget to breathe, I turn to push my way back out and knock into an unfortunate slave carrying a tray of liquor. Nothing could’ve looked more tragic and humiliating. A terror I wish I could wake from. Stomping over the slave, I grab one of the remaining intact bottles and fling my way through the terrace doors, out into the fields where I desperately try to find a place to collapse.

The tobacco barn.

I hurry past the tree we climbed and spy our initials in the soft moonlight. I can almost hear the wounded tree laughing at me for being such a fool, tattooing him forever with meaningless inscriptions. I heave the heavy door open and seek refuge among the curing tobacco, which hangs in clumps from beams. I walk through the upside-down jungle, punching the leaves as I pass. I make my way to the center of the barn and free the cork from the bottle with my teeth, to take a long swig of liquor. Welcoming the burn down my throat and into my core, where it joins the burn Elmira has seared into my soul, I collapse into a liquid, amber oblivion.

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I avoid all human contact over the break. As soon as I can return to university, I rush to my small, dreary room, perfectly suited to my interior landscape. I shun all those who smile, all those who can go about their carefree day, all those with someone—anyone—to go or to write to at home.

I escape into my books on Bryon and write his verses across the ceiling. I lie on my mattress and stare up at his regal words, hoping they fill me with their secrets. Fill any of the emptiness that echoes inside me.

At first, I care little that university expenses cost thirty-nine dollars a month when Mr. Allan sends me only forty. One dollar is all I have left to pay for wood to heat my room and hire a local servant to keep my fire going, do my wash, and take care of meals. I quickly run up debt, and I’m forced to go to the Jews in Charlottesville to borrow. With the extremely high interest, the small debt snowballs into a tremendous one, and the pressing worry at least takes away from the absence of Elmira. I leave my Bryon shrine and follow the tobacco smoke and wafts of blackstrap to the large room where the young men go to gamble. I have the last of my loan in my pocket and put it all down on a decent hand. I win a fairly large pot at chuck-a-luck, and the old orchard passed around makes me brave to bet more. By morning, I awake with a splitting headache and pockets full of the merchant’s son’s cash. I have my answer.

Every night there is a poker game, no matter how much we have to read or what papers are due. Men lose sleep to stay up half the night to drink and try to win back their losses from the day before. My luck runs out after the first three days. Soon the other boys catch on to my tells, and I too return in hopes of gaining back what I can’t stand to lose. On my way back from a particularly disappointing night, the young men on campus are rowdy from all sorts of demons. A riot ensues, as masked students throw bricks at the professors’ building. One foolishly brave professor charges out in his nightshirt, waving a broom, and a young man finishes the last of his gin and proceeds to urinate in the bottle as the professor spits all sorts of threats. The young man hurls the bottle straight at the professor’s haughty chest. The bottle shatters, wetting his white nightshirt with noxious liquid.

That riot is hardly even reprimanded, even though the professor requires a row of stitches. Such delinquent behavior is so frequent it receives little attention. With the chaos and the Jews hostilely pressing me for their interest, I send letters home to Mr. Allan begging for money to come home after my exams are through. There is a fight right outside my door, one student hitting another with a large rock and then attempting to shoot the unlucky fellow while he’s on the ground. Fortunately, his pistol misfires, but it is only after reporting this to Mr. Allen that he sends the money for transportation.

It isn’t that I seek out any comforting refuge at home. There can be none in any house where Mr. Allan resides or any town where Elmira is a newlywed. I keep away from downtown, not only for fear the Jews will track me down but more from knowing I can’t survive to see Elmira again. I have to keep her in my mind as mine and any sighting can unhinge my precarious delusions. I prefer to imagine her dead, taken from me by angels, just as Ma and Jane. She is still a maiden and her blush waits only for me. She will remain my playful child bride and still keep her promise of waiting for me.

Fanny, of course, is happy to see me. She has Thankful make a fruitcake for us to share in her sickroom. Her grey face turns slightly rosy upon my affections.

“Oh, Edgar, the house is not the same without you.” She actually feels strong enough to sit up on her daybed. She pats my hand and hers feels like a warm skeleton. She calls to Thankful, “Dear, can you fetch me another pillow?”

I jump up to help her. “I’ll get one for you, Ma.” That name never rolls smoothly from my lips.

“Sweetheart, there’s one in that drawer.”

I open up the drawer to a delightful assault of lilacs, Fanny’s scent. I pull the down pillow out and place it behind her boney back.

She half-smiles. “I don’t know how I’m getting so skinny with all the cake and strawberry ice cream I eat.” She settles down into the fluff. “Oh, enough about me. How are you?”

Her eyes look like they care, appearing to have the depth to understand the sorrow, might even have known about what occurred at Elmira’s engagement party, but with her fragility I just can’t unload such sadness on her already sunken shoulders.

“School is wonderful. I’m learning so much.” Thus begin the lies, and I once I start I can’t stop. As I lift the burden of rumors she’s heard and letters Mr. Allan undoubtedly read to her, her face lightens and even beams at the end.

Her eyelids droop, and I know I’ve overextended my visit. I go away happy she has given me so much time, her health usually lasting only half-as-long.

I actually go away feeling less sullen and wonder if pretending you are fine is key to withstanding misfortunes. Yet, misfortunes find me once again. Track me to my very door, regardless of the fake name I gave to the loan sharks.

The man comes on a Sunday, and I’m reading in the parlor when I overhear a slave call Mr. Allan from his office about a visitor in search of a young man named Mr. Perry. I nearly jump at my alias’ mention and dart out the back door before Mr. Allan can answer the door. I don’t run fast enough to escape hearing Mr. Allan shout after me, but I make it to the river. Our river, the first place I think of but the last place I choose to be.

I fight every memory fighting to be acknowledged. Why must a part of me be trying to kill me so? What evil must my soul possess to replay such bittersweet jewels? What hatred my memory has for me. I rush past the spot where I met her, look away from the bridge where she watched her storm and make my way to a completely new place, not where we swam that last day.

I stay out until dusk sets in its heaviness. I try to open the back door without it creaking and remove my shoes to creep up the stairs.

“Verry nice to see ye, Mr. Perry.” His voice rumbles up the stairs to me. I don’t want to turn around.

I call back over my shoulder, “Can we talk about this in the morning?” Plans of waking up early to avoid this conversation immediately roll through my head.

“No. Come back down this minute.” He points at his feet with a shaking hand. I descend slowly, hoping he’ll back away from the landing, but I’m forced to sidestep on the stairs to avoid the fuming statue. He marches to his office and I slink in behind him. Fanny flutters into the hallway from her bedroom. I’m sure she has been fretting about this all night. She never stays up this late.

“Maybe it’s best we discuss this tomorr—”

“Whit is this about a two-thousand dollar debt!” He barks, spittle hitting me all the way from across his desk.

“I will pay every cent back.”

“Back? Ye think I paid the shark! Oh no. I told him Mr. Perry did live here, and he could return daily to collect his debt.”

“I don’t have two thousand dollars. These people will harm me gravely if I can’t at least begin to repay them.”

“Ye must meet with them like a man. Obtain a local job and arrange repayment. Pay the mail.”

“I’m due back in two weeks. That is not enough time to raise those funds.”

“I refuse to support ye another year. Ye’re wasting my funds and, like every failing investment, I withdraw.”

“But I must finish, if you could just—”

“Ye’ll apply to be a clerk at my counting house tomorrow and that pits an end to this conversation.”

I look to Fanny leaning frailly on Thankful behind us and biting her lip.

“Sir, I am doing well.”

“Weill? Two thousand dollars into debt! Jews knocking on my door! Aliases! Hiding from the world! Sneaking my scotch!” He slaps his hand on his desk. “All the verry definition of unweill!”

I’m shocked he noticed the scotch level. I had so carefully refilled it with water. “There is nothing I should hate more than working at a counting house.”

“Ye’ve never worked at a counting house, how would ye even know? Ye give up before ye even start. Just eating the bread of idleness is whit ye’re doing.”

“You have misled me greatly then, for it’s you who has raised me with the importance of education, hard work, and persistence, and now you force me to quit!” Red blurs my sight.

“Though it’s true I taught ye to aspire, even to eminence in public life, but I never expected that Don Quixote, Gil Blas and such works were calculated to promote the end.”

His chuckle angers me even more.

I scoff loudly. “I am pursuing a literary career!”

Fanny edges closer.

“A literary career is about as profitable and respectable as acting.” He lets the last word bite before he continues, “Ye are too proud to take a job, too lazy to care for yerself, too weak to abstain from losing at cards…” He pulls items out of his desk drawer. All the objects from my hiding spot. All the things from Ma, the books from Jane, my poetry journal.

“What are you doing with those?” I lunge for them.

He sweeps the pile into his arms. “Ye should have no use for such items. Cuddling these things like a baby’s old blanket. Hiding them away like a little chipmunk. They need to be taken away for ye to become a man…a man like me.”

He takes Ma’s portrait and saunters over to the fire—the fire I’ve never seen lit before. Fanny screams and faints into Thankful’s ready arms. Fury burns up from my center and impedes my sight as I lash out at him, punching him under the jaw, causing him to reel into his barren shelves. I rescue the painting before any fire’s tongue touches it, not caring if his arm falls back into the flames. As he flounders on floor, I gather up my cherished pile and walk to the door of his study.

Full of hatred and bile, and with too much high-pitched emotion, I say the words I never thought I’d say, “I have heard you say—when you little thought I was listening and therefore must have said it in earnest—that you had no affection for me.”

Allan reclaims his height and laughs.

Knowing if I stay even half a second more I will attempt to quiet that grating laugh forever, I give an apologetic look to the revived Fanny, who is still within Thankful’s plump embrace, and turn toward the front door, going anywhere but this place I never called home.

“Where are you going?” Fanny cries behind me.

Without turning around, I yell out, “To go north and save to complete my education.”

With a speed I have never seen her reach before, Fanny catches up to me and tucks a large coil of bills into my pocket. Her apologetic eyes say everything.

“There ye go, babying him again, Fanny. A’ve no doubt it’s why he’s so soft. We would’ve been better off taking the other boy. But then, of course Edgar’s family wanted Henry.”

Fanny turns on him. “Stop him this instant, John. This is killing me!”

He takes a deep breath, attempting to smite the hatred within him. And only for Fanny does he say, “Edgar, come back into my office, and we shall discuss the counting clerk job civilly.”

I yank the front door open.

He barks, “Where are ye going?”

“Some place in this wide world, where I will be treated—not as you have treated me.” I slam the heavy door shut behind me.