Chapter 36

Chapter 36

My footsteps crunch through crisp and burnt leaves. Leaves that disintegrate to dust underfoot—the memory of summer rain long forgotten.

Forgotten…

The sky hangs in a mournful haze. The air carries the scent of wet timber and fall mold. Half-bare trees reach up, praying in the October winds. Their branches hit in melancholy rhythm, beckoning me further ahead.

Pachelbel’s Canon fades in the distance.

I search for Virginia, feeling her close to the song. I imagine her dancing to the music, twirling ahead somewhere up the ashen path.

“Sissy?” I call out in the echoes and my voice swims along on the wind, carried with the falling leaves to a break in the enchanted wood. A fever pushes me ahead, a blaze fuels my soul, to follow the break in the path, to go where Virginia might go. A far-too-happy laugh lights ahead, an unnerving mix of joy and mischievousness. The light swirls and forms into a wispy and luminous woman. My heart falls when I don’t see Virginia’s face, but the specter beckons me with curls of her diamond fingers, under a half-crescent moon. As soon as I approached her, Jane turns and her eyes sparkle upon me with old love. I reach a yearning hand toward her, but she brings a finger to her lips.

“We must hurry,” she whispers and checks worriedly to the stars. A tomb appears before us, quaking from the hallowed earth. It towers over me, strewn with lichen and cypress, yet it has not been sealed for long. Why had Jane brought me here? To the place I avoided, to the place I most feared. Jane looks on with anticipation, quivers of encouragement in her nod. I crumble away the lichen and find the inscription with shaking fingers. I blow away the graveyard dust to see her shining name.

Virginia.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

Weeks later, Mrs. Shew is again cutting my hair. She holds the mirror up for me to see, but I can tell she’s in a hurry to leave. Her time spent with us grows shorter as the spring days get longer.

“Goodnight, dear Maria.” She gives her a pitying smile as Muddy goes to work on dinner, but looks at me like a challenging toddler. “Edgar.”

“Won’t you return for supper? You take away the sunshine when you leave us.” I wish I could cling to her dress to keep her here.

She holds her tongue and gives a faint smile. “I have to see to my own house. I’ll return again.”

“Tomorrow morning?”

Muddy intervenes. “Edgar, leave her be. She is so good to visit us when she can.”

“I will try my best, Edgar.” She fixes her bonnet and quickly sweeps the bottle of Irish Whiskey, which I’ve been slowly emptying, into her miracle bag.

I move faster than I have all day.

“Wait there, Mrs. Shew.” I try to laugh, as I reach for her bag. “Something of value has fallen into your satchel.”

She steels herself with a metal I’ve never seen before.

“It is time for you to quit.” She holds the bag tight under her heavy bust. “I will only stay to help as long as you are improving.”

I check to Muddy, who looks down to her chopping. “Do you feel I have a problem as well?”

Muddy takes a guilty breath in, and says, “I think you are relying heavily on the drop.”

This only strengthens Mrs. Shew’s resolve. “I will not care for a liquored invalid. Pull yourself together for Maria’s sake and find yourself a proper wife to care for the house and Maria. You are not the only one who has lost somebody. The whole world is wearing black in mourning from the epidemics. When I come back here tomorrow, you better have improved or I am no longer held to my promise.”

I resent the accusations and she knows nothing of my past. Thinking Virginia is the only loss I’ve known. How dare she compare me to others; others who have had doting mothers and fathers who give them their names as well as their love; brothers and sisters their whole lives, within one household; women that say they will marry them and hold to their promises; wives who don’t fade away, still in youth.

What does she know of loss?

I go upstairs to get my coat to buy a new bottle, but she continues to shout upstairs after me. “I am not your mother. I’m your neighbor and done all that I can to assist here. I’m not here to wipe the spittle of your face or throw away your empty bottles.”

I return in time to see her head to the door. “God bless you, Maria.”

“Don’t leave me.” I fall to the floor on my rubbery legs. “You’re the only one who can save me.”

“You do not want to be saved.” She closes the door and Muddy wraps her arms around me on the floor.

She wipes away my tears with her apron and I can see she needs a handkerchief as well.

“What will become of us now?” I hold her tight.

She says, through her sobs, “God knows I wish we were both in our graves. It would, I am sure, be far better.”

I send letters to Mrs. Shew and even go to knock on her door, begging for the angel to let me in, to save me.

“I will do what you want!” I cry, banging on her oak door, rattling the hinges. “I will prove to you I can be redeemed!” After silence, I slink down to the porch floor and hit my head repeatedly on the wood. “Why are giving up on me? You promised Virginia you’d care for me!”

She doesn’t answer. Rejected by angels.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

I stand in front of Virginia’s grave, in the military coat that served as her blanket this last year, imagining the cold darkness she dwells in now. She hated the dark. The brutal January wind blows right through me. The crows are the only creatures that have ventured out in this dreary weather. Their mournful caws echo in my empty heart. I stare at the frozen ground, hard under my thin-soled shoes, and envision what kind of horrible critter is boring their way into her coffin under my feet. Oh, how she feared the smallest spider! It was my job to rid the house of vermin at the faintest cry, but there is no way I can keep her safe. Nothing I can do for her now.

I finish the bottle as quickly as I can, in hopes it will warm me, but fear I will need more. A lonely tear nearly freezes on my face. I can’t let these thoughts affect me. I have to stay numb, or the pain will kill me. I’m a tree with all the limbs cut from me. All that remains is a stump. No life, only stuck…trapped, waiting for the rest of me to die.

All I can give her is my company. I would sit here until spring, but the cold soaks into my bones, bringing me to her chill. I will have to return tomorrow. I retreat to a warm fire, while Virginia stays frozen.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

I don’t know if it’s my lack of recent publications, or if those around me notified him of my distress following Virginia’s death, but I awake to Sartain at the footboard of my bed.

Muddy hangs on the doorframe behind him. “He has had a rough night…working.” She lies for me.

He chuckles. “Working doesn’t have such a scent to make your eyes water.” He claps his hands, excruciatingly loud. “Up! Up!”

I shake my head, but he drags me up and over to my wash stand. “Deep breath.” Is my only warning before I’m plunged into the cool water.

“Are you mad!” I struggle to get away from him, but he dunks me back in. Once I catch my breath again, he pats my face and now-drenched nightshirt with a towel.

I let the held breath out in his face and he gags a bit, stepping away.

“Ah, just the remedy.” He grabs the toothpowder and shoves it in my mouth, holding his hand over to keep me rinsing. I spit it out in the washbowl and he says, “Much improved. Now get yourself dressed—that is where I draw the line—and meet me downstairs for some coffee.”

I finally smile. “I wish I could say it’s good to see you.”

He chuckles and whistles away down the stairs.

I come down in my usual daily attire and he shakes his head. “I hope you have something that doesn’t smell of the bottom of a bottle.”

Muddy jumps in. “Wear your fancy coat and fine necktie.”

I put my hands up. “Are we going somewhere, or is this purely for your entertainment?”

He slips into a fine claw-hammer coat. “What you need is a female distraction and I know just the event. However, I will not be seen with you in the likes. Go slick up.”

I change and he accepts my attire with a half-grin, tucking a spring wildflower in both our lapels. His carriage is smooth and open, a blessing since the fresh air revives me. We pull up to grand estate gala. I turn to him. “It’s good you made me change.”

He brings his cane out and taps his hat to two decorated ladies who walk arm in arm. Sartain raises his eyes after they pass and sweeps his cane quickly for me to follow them. All who pass gasp and greets Sartain as though they’re childhood friends. As soon as I have a moment to speak to him without interruption, I remark, “You’d think you lived here.”

“The world is an amazing thing once you venture out in it.”

“No one here knows me.”

“Oh, they do. Every time you turn they take a peek at the elusive, mysterious, and mournful Edgar A. Poe.” I shift quickly and do catch a few startled stares. “I wonder if it’s the effect of the Ellet rumors or my pinky-tipping sprees.”

“Hmm, possibly, or quite frankly people fear genius.”

I scoff but then realize it wasn’t in jest.

He puts his hand around my shoulder and points behind a glass. “Now that lovely little bird has been watching you.”

I follow his direction to a blond-haired beauty, sitting on the settee with two other women deep in conversation beside her. She doesn’t glance away once I spy her.

I move to grab a mint julep from a servant’s tray, but Sartain removes it from my grasp as quickly. I check back to him, question on my tongue and he shakes his head stubbornly. I walk over to her and introduce myself. As soon as they hear Poe the others pop like corn out of their chairs and leave the pretty woman alone with me.

“I know who you are.” Her grey-blue eyes register deep within me, contrasting to the corn-silk, thickly curled hair framing her face. She looks like the porcelain doll Virginia carried with her when she was young.

“Well, that leaves you at the advantage since I do not know yours.”

“Sarah Helen Whitman. Friends call me Helen.”

Another Helen.

I bow to kiss her hand and she allows me to sit beside her, even though half the room watches our introduction.

“I am sorry to hear of your young wife’s departing.” She brings her handkerchief up around her sculpted nose and inhales.

Something in her eyes allows me honesty. “I am barely surviving it. My good friend has forced me out tonight.”

“It is a testament to your attachment that it has affected you so.”

The annoying shaking begins in my hands, and I scan the room subtly for the servant with the tray of glasses to soothe it.

“Are you in mourning as well?” I ask, since she is head to toe in black and my eyes fix on a small coffin pendant on her neck. Unnerving to most, but somehow reassuring to me.

“My husband died years ago. I became accustomed to the look.”

I sit more comfortably. “It becomes you.” We trade smiles—yet I’m outshined by her dazzling smile.

“You are one of my favorite poets. I have seen you before, but you declined to make an introduction.”

I think back to all the literary meetings and search the dreary faces for her grey-blue eyes. She answers my bewildered look. “In Providence. You attended a lecture and walked right by my rose garden.”

“A grievous error on my part, clearly.”

She smiles again and brings the handkerchief back to her face. “Ether,” she explains but takes another breath.

“Are you ill?”

Why am I drawn so to the pallor and aura of those dancing toward death?

“A heart condition. But it has not gotten the best of me yet.” The life in her shines out her eyes and smile—a fire that can be so easily snuffed out.

“Can I get you a drink?”

“No, thank you.” I rise to get one for myself. She watches me with weary eyes as I sip my gin-sling, as if I would turn into a raving lunatic after one sip.

“I know what you’ve probably heard, but I do not have a problem.”

“Some say it is your downfall.”

I appreciate her candor. “It is only to numb the pain. If I could only be happy again, I would not need it.”

Her lips twist in determination. We talk the rest of the night as she recites her writing of high caliber and her favorite lines of my poems. She knows them better than I and says them with a theatric passion. Time elapses far too fast and I haven’t even found the opportunity to ask about her morbid jewelry, when Sartain dances up to us, letting me know it’s time to return me to Muddy.

“I must finally get a chance to give you a tour of my rose garden, Mr. Poe.”

“I shall redeem myself there.”

Once in the carriage, Sartain smiles at me for some time.

“What?” I ask, returning a smile.

“I’m waiting for you to thank me.”

“Thank you, although I do not know what is left of my sorry life.”

He rolls his eyes. “You have a long time ahead of you, and many more poems for me to publish and get rich from. Just don’t get too merry, we both profit well from your beautiful misery.”