Chapter 21

Chapter 21

Henry doesn’t improve. After supper, while the summer sun is still high, he coughs some more and says he’s headed for bed. I follow him up the stairs, pretending I need to fetch something from our room, but I’m secretly unsure if he’ll tumble back down the steep steps. I watch as his hands tremble, holding onto the thin banister. I keep my hands out in case he should fall back. He makes it, though, but the sweat beads thickly on his brow, as he falls into our bed.

“Edgar. I have to ask you a favor.”

“Anything.” I say, searching for something I can say I came up here for.

His shaking hands fumble into his dirty pocket. He brings out some coins. “Take this into town and bring back a bottle.”

“But you’re ill?”

A fire lights in his eyes and he barks with sudden energy. “Which is all the more reason why I need it.”

I pick up my jacket, now needing it to walk into town. His voice softens when I take the coins from his rope-calloused hand. “It is the only thing that quiets my cough. I can’t sleep without it.”

“I’ll hurry then.”

He relaxes and his watery cough chases me down the stairs.

The liquor does not quiet his cough. Although Henry seems little disturbed by it in his drunken slumber, I lose so much sleep that my normally sullen eyes are made heavier by large, tired bags. I can’t complain though, not with Henry laboring so. Muddy busies herself with endless, and usually useless, household tasks while Virginia cuddles up, like an old, faithful cat to wherever Henry languishes—keeping him warm while he freezes slowly in the August humidity. She always turns away when the blood appears on his handkerchiefs, speckled cloths that haunt us. I keep myself busy with trips to Sammy’s for Henry and try to write, but all my prose turns dark and mournful. There is so little happiness when a loved one’s grey pallor deepens as they slowly disappear.

One night, after finishing half the bottle to ease the drenching night sweats—sweats that make him throw off all the quilts in fever, but then just as quickly pull them back up under his chattering jaw—Henry makes an unusual request.

“Edgar,” he slurs slightly, in a whiskey-induced trance. “You must promise me something.”

“I will decide how worthy I am of promising after you let it be known.”

He chuckles, but it grows into another bloody production. I will try harder not to make him laugh.

“You mustn’t let our nitwit cousin Neilson marry Virginia.”

I’ve heard of Neilson, a few years younger than me but quite accomplished for his age. He has the privilege of both parents, parents that make every effort to help him on his way to becoming something.

“Why should I stand in the way of that? Neilson seems to be of fit character.”

“He’s a bad egg. Neilson is not to be trusted—” His outburst sends him into such a cough, producing red stains the likes of which I haven’t seen before.

“Calm down, Henry. This topic isn’t good for you. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

“No, there might not be a tomorrow.” I can tell by his color that it might be true.

“Fine then, tell me quietly why you have doubts about Neilson.”

He takes a slow, cough-suppressing breath. “I don’t have faith he will provide the undying care Muddy and Virginia deserve.” He sits up, his face strained with concern. “I have terrible nightmares where Neilson slits Virginia’s throat.”

“That is the effect of the night-sweats, I’m sure.”

Is he going crazy from the illness?

“No.” He locks his eyes on mine in a sober stare. “I’ve had these dreams all my life. Long before the consumption.”

“So, how should I keep Neilson away if he is persistent?”

He swallows, searching for acceptable words. “I always planned on marrying her myself—”

I inadvertently shake my head.

“Not until she was of proper age of course.”

The blurred, drunken confession resurges after months of pushing it out of my mind.

“But, obviously things have changed.” He coughs lightly, keeping the blood down.

“You don’t know that. Consumption’s known to go into remissions. You can have periods of—”

He shakes his head, with a sad smile. “My lease on life is short. No use in wasting time on such hopeful thoughts.”

“Then what must I do?” I will do anything to ease his mind.

“You must marry Virginia instead. And care for both of them like you know I would.”

“But I have no desire for such a child.”

He grins. “That is why I choose you all the more.”

“Easy to laugh at, but this would be for the rest of my life.”

He sits up. “Haven’t you been happier here than you ever have been before?”

I nod.

“Haven’t Muddy and Virginia given you love?”

“Of course.”

“And you plan on leaving that someday? To rely completely on the trust of strangers?”

I think of Elmira and her abandonment, her unsympathetic forgetfulness and quick substitution.

“Muddy and Virginia are ours by blood. Blood, Edgar. Something precious to us.”

The more he talks, the more truth is heard. I won’t ever be able to leave such safety, such assured love. How can I ever trust another female again? Can I even love again?

“You’re right. Someone must be sure to take care of Virginia and Muddy, and who better than me.”

He leans forward to tousle my hair. “That’s my boy. I can die happy knowing you will do your best to do right by them.” He is sent into a spasm that takes even the normal grey from his face. Whiskey vapors sting in the air. I tense in useless expectation, until he finally draws a haggard breath.

“As soon as Virginia is of appropriate age I will marry her, for you. Love her like a sister.”

“That is all I ask, dear brother. All I ask.” He reaches over to the side table and holds out Father’s watch and Ma’s lock of hair. Hand trembling, he places them into my palm. “My treasures are yours now.”

He falls into a sweaty sleep.

Part of me yearns to go sleep on the floor downstairs, but I worry about him being alone and thinking I’ve abandoned him. No. I stay in the drenched sheets with him and count the hours by his coughs.

His relieving conversation seems to hurry him to the grave. The promise brings a resignation that makes me wish I’d put off making it. I awake one morning after enjoying hours of sleep, hours of sleep that cause me to shoot up in bed. He expired hours ago, beside me, and I didn’t even stir. Twenty-four years old, the same age as my mother, and dead of the very same disease.

Another ghost.

All who love me are dead.

What use are they to me across the veil?

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

I dress in Fanny’s mourning clothes, which are a few inches too short since I’ve grown over the years. Yet, with no funding from Allan, I don’t entertain the thought of having new ones made. Muddy takes out the hems as much as she can in a hurry since she has to see to Henry’s burial clothes. Such a cloud hangs over our house as we wake him in the keeping room, being sure that he is indeed gone, and his spirit leaves his body before burial. The room smells of tansy and rosemary due to the herbal bouquets placed around him to improve the air. It will be days before the carpenter finishes his pine coffin, and Muddy already frets that it won’t fit through our door. Many visitors pay their respects, and one of them is his favorite cousin Neilson.

The towering youth with long, square earlocks saunters in our door and immediately removes his fancy hat and holds it to his puffed-up, monkey-jacketed chest. His gaze frantically searches the room, with what I assume is in quest of finding Henry, but they light upon Virginia and roost there. Once assured of her presence, he gives Muddy a hurried kiss on her freckled cheek and comes to shake my hand. He pulls me strangely into him and holds on longer than usual.

He says, with one scarred-eyebrow raised, “So pleased to finally meet you, cousin, unhappy though the circumstance is.”

“Though unhappy as it is, the pleasure is all mine. I have heard so much about you. Henry spoke of you frequently.”

Virginia hides a smile under her cupped hand.

He walks over to Henry. “I will always be sure to care for those you left behind too soon.”

I swear I see Henry’s body twitch. The atmosphere changes in the room, and we all sit on edge of our seats as Neilson leans over to whisper something in Henry’s ear.

I imagine Henry’s spirit trying to get back into his corpse, in order to knock him from here to the dickens. Muddy breaks the tension in the air. “Who would like some tea?” Neilson nods happily. “Sit down, Neilson. You must be tired from your hasty travel.”

He sits as close to Virginia as he can. There is something in his eyes as he watches her. A hunger. Something desperate and worrying, like a fox watching a hen house. I understand Henry’s concern at once. Neilson reaches into his supple leather bag and pulls out a thick roll of blue, gauzy cotton. Muddy beams eagerly and she places the teapot down to run her hand over it, cooing like a pigeon.

Neilson soaks up the moment. “I saw this and thought of my Virginia immediately.”

Virginia says, without touching the fabric, “It is lovely, Neilson, but it will be sometime before I will wear color again.” She gazes upon Henry.

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of interrupting your mourning. As soon as it’s proper, of course.”

Muddy takes the fabric to her large bosom. “Thank you, dear Neilson, for your unexpected kindness. We have never had anything so fine.”

“Like I said, it’s my pleasure to see Virginia enjoying such luxuries. Business is doing so well that I can gift them.”

Muddy’s face rises in interest and she halts in tucking away the fabric to ask, “Business is doing well then?”

Neilson looks far too eager to tout his accomplishments, but Virginia chides, “Ma, this is extremely inappropriate conversation for a wake.”

Muddy drops her eyes at once and resumes tucking the fabric away in the cupboard. We wake Henry in quiet conversation.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

Oh, how I wish his body to come alive again and dance to his favorite song. But no, it only twitches a little with the expected movements of the dead and the strange gaseous noises of early decay. He is most definitely dead.

It’s Neilson who pays for the coffin and plot in Westminster Hall and Burying Ground, I wonder what Henry would think of that. Neilson stays in town for the week at the city hotel, and I keep up my chore of purchasing a whisky bottle from Sammy. I take it to the water to drink, unheeding glares from Muddy. If she has any inkling of my daily excursions, she doesn’t let on. Under Neilson’s envious eye Virginia uses me as replacement for her cuddling and affections, causing him to keep visiting far too often.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

Months later, I’m lying with my bottle under a feathery, low willow by the bay, thinking of all the magazine rejections, the useless schoolteacher applications, and the pleading letters I sent to Mr. Allan that went unanswered, when Henry comes back to me. Not in a dream but out of the water, in rainbows of greys. The drops run off him like gossamer cobwebs.

“Henry!” I shout as if he isn’t coming straight toward me. Ma, Fanny, and Jane step out of the water like sirens in a row behind him. They all stand at my feet; I’m too liquored to sit up straight. As much as I try to communicate with them, they don’t speak. They give me pitying looks.

“You of all people, Henry, should understand,” I bark, but he just stares on before slowly disappearing.

“Take me with you!” I cry up into the empty, sorrow-hung branches. Only a loon replies.