Unknown

The next day, thick in their remembrance, I stop myself from going to town and instead bring out my neglected journal. Fighting off the nausea and a drilling headache brought on from whiskey’s absence, I’m going to have to better Neilson Poe if I shall keep my promise to Henry.

I shake the slight tremor from my hand to button up my only coat. After many drafts, I perfect the copying of two poems and a short story and write a letter to a Mr. John Kennedy, judge of the writing contest at the Baltimore Saturday Visitor. I wait until the ink dries then dart out past Virginia and Muddy, who are eating batter cakes, to get it in before the deadline.

The streets are especially crowded for a Saturday. Townsfolk swarm the area in front of the newspaper office and I push my way through to the door. The newspaper boy cries out, “Slavery Banned in England!” Men and women hold their coins up in the air and, once they grab hold of the news, they walk away, heads buried in the pages. But I can’t be waylaid, I yank open the heavy door and go to apply for the contest. When I head back home many of those southerners, who have read enough, shake fists into the air and shout expletives.

“Wait ‘til you see. This will spread. Nothing spreads like judgment and moral superiority!” someone yells out as I walk by, but I care little about the slaves, the plantation owners, or even anyone in this town. I need to win that contest, and the prize money will come in handy. It could be enough for us to get away from here, far away from Neilson, far away from poverty. This contest is going to be different, not like all the other rejections. I can feel it.

When I reach home, Virginia runs to me in tears. “It was awful, Eddie.” She dives her wet face into me, and I worry about Muddy until her shocked-face, stricken of all color appears at the door. I question her with my eyes as I hold Virginia.

“Grandma Poe has passed.” She wipes her brow. “She was dying all morning, the poor dear. I’m just glad it’s over now.” She takes a long breath, but the lines on her forehead deepen.

She might find relief in the end of Grandma’s languishing, but a new worry emerges—the terrifying realization of the cessation of Grandpa Poe’s pension. She doesn’t have to tell me her thoughts, I know I need to send Mr. Allan another letter immediately.

Dearest Pa,

I am in the greatest distress and have no other friend on earth to apply to except yourself if you refuse to help me I know not what I shall do. Eleven days ago I was arrested for a debt. If you will only send me this one time $80, by Wednesday next, I will never forget you kindness & generosity. If you refuse God only knows what I shall do & my hopes & prospects are ruined forever.

EAP

I know it’s a lie, but after all different approaches this is the last that might work and if by the end of the month we don’t find some aid, the rent won’t be paid.

Neilson comes to the funeral, of course, but with a happy surprise. He walks in the small house with a pretty, young woman on his clenched arm.

“Josephine!” Virginia cries and, after hugging her and responding to Neilson’s demand for a hello kiss, she remembers me. “This is my lovely half-sister. It’s so nice of you to bring her, Neilson.”

Neilson clears his throat and pats the hand resting on his arm. “Josephine is not only here to pay her respects to Grandma Poe, but is also here as my wife.”

My heart leaps. Virginia can’t control a smirk. “Well, that is wonderful, albeit surprising, news. You never told us of your affections?”

Muddy, normally welcoming and the first to greet Neilson whenever he interrupts our day, stands back, staring at her husband’s first wife’s child on the arm of her hopeful benefactor.

Neilson shifts the weight off one foot, but Josephine seems oblivious to his sudden nervous disposition. Neilson says with a stupid smile, “I always knew I would marry within the family, and Mother was pressing me to find a suitable partner. Josephine is of marrying age and was happy to comply.”

“How lovely.” Virginia again can’t stop smirking but cuts the tension by leading Josephine to the table where Muddy finally snaps to and greets Josephine with tea and pretended hospitality. Muddy cleverly gets Virginia to play some mournful church songs, and Neilson watches her in a trance, as Josephine babbles on about their wedding to a stone-faced Muddy. Neilson stays only the day, quite unusual for him, and after they leave dry kisses behind in goodbye, Muddy rushes out to take out her anger on the laundry and Virginia breathes a sigh of relief. “Now you have nothing to worry about.”

“It is only because you are too young and he was pressured to marry. I see the way he still stares at you.”

Virginia seems reassured by Neilson’s marriage though. “I will miss the suppers he brings in.”

A week later, I receive an envelope in Mr. Allan’s pen. I can’t believe my plan at least garnishes a reply. We’re barely surviving on Boston brown bread and butter, and I yearn for a salty, sweet slab of ham. I rip the envelope open, and I’m so relieved to see the eighty dollar note, but still hurt to see there is no letter. If he truly believes I’m languishing in prison, he would have nothing to say to me? Only cash sent to assuage his guilt.

The eighty dollars goes too fast. It provides us with another month’s rent and a little meat and milk to have with the same horrible bread that constitutes our diet. I can’t make up another lie for money, so I decide to take the last of the money to go and beg to Mr. Allan in person.

It has been so long that I’ve been to Richmond, but all the memories of the river, Jane, and Fanny come rushing back to me, clouding my heart with thick clots of bittersweet. Moldavia is in as grand a shape as ever. The thought I’d resided in such wealth contrasted with the threadbare and over-darned clothes I wear. The greed of such a man. The hot summer sun makes me wish for a glass of lemonade, and as I approach the worn steps, worn by my boyish shoes, I climb now as a stranger. I knock on the door and an unfamiliar house slave opens the door. I ask for Mr. Allan, but the man’s blood-shot eyes dart around. “I must check with Mrs. Allan.”

I hold the rage back. Why should he have to check with Mrs. Allan? Was she running the house now?

The slave walks out on the large porch and looks to the left field to where a young woman watches two small children play as she holds a sleeping baby—Mr. Allan’s no doubt. The children he always wanted. No use for the borrowed one any longer.

Not allowed to holler to her, the slave walks across the lawn to notify her of my presence. She first appears pleasant to see a visitor on the porch and looks me up and down with approval as she approaches. “Welcome to Moldavia.”

Am I welcome at my own house? I wish I could say. The baby in her arms softens me. “I’ve come to call on Mr. Allan.”

As soon as I say the words, her whole demeanor changes. She lets her body slouch, averts her eyes, and pats the baby as though she is too busy to stand there. “I’m sorry to inform you, Mr. Poe, that Mr. Allan is extremely ill. Only his family and his nurses are allowed in to see him, on doctor’s orders.” She actually cocks her head to her slave, and he begins to close the door.

I stick my worn shoe out to stop it and keep calm. “I am family. And I don’t need to be invited into my own house.” I push the door open and she dramatically jumps out of the way. I rush up the stairs, knowing by heart which ones creak more than the others, as her slave follows up to try to stop me.

“Edgar, you are not welcome here!” She shouts, upsetting the baby. “You must leave now!”

I charge up the stairs to find his bedroom. The room I avoided and only peeked into when the door was left ajar. This time, I throw the heavy door open and barge into the expansive room. I immediately search the bed for him but find it’s perfectly made. A croak from the winged-back chair draws my eyes and my mouth falls open at the feeble, stiff and ancient man in the chair. Only the steel remains in his eyes, when all other firmness and strength abandon his body. He shakes with rage upon my entrance.

“A’m not yer Pa!” He rises quaking, every muscle threatening to give way. With all his might, the old man raises his cane at me and yells, “Be gone!”

It isn’t the idle threat of the cane, but the shock of what became of him in a matter of years that scares me out. I back up and close the door behind me, taking a moment to catch my breath outside the door. A thump resounds within the chamber, but I dare not check on him. The slave stands waiting for me outside the door. He gives me a curious look of pity and opens the door to check on his master. Pity from a slave.

Every fiber in him hates me. I had hoped seeing me in person would rekindle some memory of love when I was his only son, or maybe an ounce of pride from my six-mile swim, or the massive guilt he felt after Fanny died. But no, there is only hatred in those failing bones. I pull together the lapels of my worn jacket like a bird smoothing its feathers after a scare, and I make my way back down the staircase I know I’ll never walk down again. Mrs. Allan stands at the base of the staircase, arms around all her children, surrounded by three large slaves. She says nothing but tries to cut me with her wealthy stare. Her bloody fertile stare. I take one last look at the boy, his oldest son, the one who will soon inherit this all, everything I never had.

A month later, word comes through Rosalie that Mr. Allan has died, in the very chair he swung at me from. I go to his funeral in Shockoe Cemetery and stand in the background only for my own remaining grief. The part of me that still wishes he had embraced me even now. When all walk away to mourn at Moldavia, I go up to the open grave. Fanny lays, complacent in her shady spot, and I place a garden rose on her grave. I can’t help but laugh out loud at the engraving on Mr. Allan’s headstone:

Blessed with every social and benevolent feeling, he fulfilled the duties of Husband, Father, Brother, and Friend, with surpassing Kindness, supported the ills of life with Fortitude, and his Prosperity with Meekness.

I’m not surprised he leaves me out of his Will. That look of complete disdain, the look you’d give a pesky fly before a lethal swat, told me I was nothing to him. What did surprise me is that I hear he left some of his fortune to other children—illegitimate children he begot while he was with Fanny. Apparently not even the new Mrs. Allan was aware of this and goes to work right away to contest it. It’s then I decide to forever sign my name as Edgar Allan Poe. The world will recognize that I truly am an Allan, even though Mr. Allan and his Will never acknowledged it.

Upon leaving the attorney’s office, I bump into a gentleman and nearly knock him off the sidewalk. “Please excuse me, sir. I’m in a terrible trance and—” I reach to right him as the lady he’s escorting tilts up her pagoda parasol. Her green eyes haven’t changed, but she dresses now like her mother, all corseted and in the finest cottons and satins Richmond can purchase and tailor. Her beautiful hair is captured and caged under a fine hat with silk roses. Her eyebrows rise as she recognizes me. For one moment, too brief a moment, it’s as though time stops for us. We look through each other to ten years ago. Then the moment is gone and time catches up to us. I have to look away, for the pain dissolves the very center of me. Yet I avert my eyes from her only to acknowledge little faces, dear little faces of hers, beaming up at me with innocent interest.

“There has been no damage, my dear sir. I am always in a trance when I leave this same office.” He gives a rich man’s chuckle.

That’s right. I’ve heard he is co-owner of the James River boat line. He probably does business with Mr. Allan’s very same lawyer. I hate the kind smile he gives. I want to punch it off his loathsome, handsome face. Immediately I remember the state of my clothes. How tattered and impoverished I must look to her. What a fool I must seem, dumbfounded and desperate.