THREE

John always said writing was a way to cheat the rules of the living. “Without it,” he would say, “I would only get to live one life. Not that it is a bad life, mind you; God knows, I am eternally grateful to have you and Weston. But one can only ever travel on one road at a time. When I am writing, at minimum, I get to live in at least two worlds at once.”

As I sat at the small table in the nursery, finishing up a second breakfast with my son, I thought about John’s words the night before, how matter-of-factly he assumed I could make this leap from my present being to a better one. When I had come up here an hour ago, to this cheery room with its tall windows, charming pale-blue-and-white wallpaper illustrated with pictures from nursery tales and rhymes, the amusements of childhood littering the floor, I had left him to work in his library on his novel. An hour ago, we had both yet been too tired, what with the late night and the excess of wine, to broach any subjects of greater magnitude than whether the eggs were firm enough or no. Now I wondered if he might not be ready for an early break.

“Hannah?” I called.

A form emerged from a seat at the corner by the window. My age, but dressed in gray up to her neck, she was all angles and bony ridges, making even the bun beneath her bonnet look more geometrical than rounded. For six years now, I had been trying to convince her no one in the household would mind it should she ever choose to wear a more vibrant color. But she demurred all such suggestions and Weston set such great store by her—for she could be a great companion to him when they were alone together, belying the indications set by the sharp angles and the omnipresent gray—I hesitated to press her, not wanting to give offense.

I dabbed at the corner of my mouth with a napkin. I could never eat breakfast with my son without being the one who wound up with an unseemly quantity of jam on her face.

“Hannah,” I said, “I know I was going to take Weston to the park myself this morning, but something has come up.”

“Of course, madam. I will take him, although I know he will miss you.”

Hannah was always careful to make a point of the fact I was the absolute sun in Weston’s universe, rendering my husband the moon and anyone else, such as herself, a lesser star. Still, she need not have worried. I was secure as to my position and yet I also knew, while Weston loved having me there, Hannah, bun and all, was capable of coming up with games to entertain his fancy that were as imaginative as any I could.

“I don’t think he’ll mind quite so much for one day,” I said. “And, anyway, if it is as bright and beautiful outside again tomorrow, we shall get another chance. Is not this glorious weather for January?”

I had always liked my husband’s library: the floor-to-ceiling books with their wooden ladder, the forest-green walls, the sturdy dark furniture, the fire that always roared, and the fact that the door was never entirely closed to me.

What I did not like so much was the aquarium he kept: the underwater garden with fish, supported by a metal frame and sitting on a magnificent stand. I did not like seeing things in cages. To me, it always seemed as though the fish would be happier in a larger body of water outside.

“John.” Ignoring the armless chair on the company side of his desk, I hopped up on the desk itself, right next to where he was writing, my skirts skewing his papers a bit, thus making it impossible for him to ignore me.

It was indeed a matter of my good fortune that John was one of those rare writers who could tolerate an unexpected interruption without being driven totally mad. And not just a rare writer, but a rare husband, for it was hard to imagine Joshua Collins or Charles Biltmore tolerating a wife who hopped up on desks. It often occurred to me to think on how much more fortunate we were in our match than others in our acquaintance. I could not imagine life with a husband who had no interest in my mind or whose own mind offered me little of interest.

“Have you come up with anything for me yet?” I asked.

He removed the gold-rimmed glasses he always wore when writing, rubbed his eyes. “It might be nice, if just once you asked before disturbing my work. Still, I suppose it is too much to expect you to change now.”

His smile told me he would not necessarily welcome such a change, even if I could somehow manage it.

“Now, then: What is it I am supposed to be coming up with for you? And it had better be good. After all, I just left Molly Henshaw”—he referred to his heroine—“destitute, upon the death of her father, who entailed his estate through the male line upon a distant cousin. I do believe Molly will have to become a governess.” He chewed on the earpiece of his glasses before adding, “Possibly in Yorkshire somewhere.”

Wasting no time, I reminded him of my resolution the night before.

“Ah, yes,” he considered, “your resolution. You never said last night, Emma: Why do you want to be a better person?”

“Because,” I burst out, feeling the frustration anew, “what have I done for the world? I take care of Weston, I take care of you—”

“And we are no longer enough?” he cut in, stingingly.

“It is not that.” It was so hard to articulate what I was feeling. “It is that I feel I should be doing more.”

“Very nicely put. You say we are enough but you want more anyway.”

I could see he was hurt somehow, angry.

“It is so hard to explain,” I said, desperate he should understand me despite my lack of words. “I just want to be worth more and the only word I can think of to describe that nebulous ‘more’ is ‘better.’” I looked at him imploringly. “I do not mean to hurt you in any way,” I hastened to add.

After a long moment, his look softened and he brushed my concerns away. “Well, dear, if you ask me, I don’t believe you need improving upon in any sense. To my eyes, you are perfect just the way you are.”

He must have seen the look that crossed my face, for he hurried on: “But I do not suppose you are asking me for my opinion of that. I see that now. Very well, then: If you feel called upon to improve yourself in some way, why do you not consider some form of good works?”

I was taken aback at, well, the lack of originality behind his scheme.

“What do you mean,” I asked, “knitting socks for the poor?”

“No,” he agreed, “I do not suppose that was the sort of thing I had in mind for you. Although you need not make it sound as though to do such a thing were as superfluous as, say, darning the queen’s stockings.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that I already do that sort of thing through the church.”

“I see your point. Perhaps, somehow, doing good works and being a better person are not strictly synonymous. Hmm…” He paused for a long time. “Well,” he finally said, taking up my right hand gently and placing his pen in my palm, “you could try doing what I do.”

Despite the lightness of the instrument, it felt somehow heavy there, peculiarly both liberating and dangerous at the same time.

“You think it would benefit the world if I became a novelist?” I asked.

“Hardly. There are already too many of us to go around. No, I was thinking more along the lines of doing something to actually improve another human’s existence. What could be more noble than endeavoring to bring a glimmer of brightness into an otherwise dull life?”

That was when he told me about the prisoners he had encountered during his research visits to Hollowgate Prison. Having tackled the war in the Crimea, he had determined to take on the ever unpopular topic of prison reform, much as Mr. Dickens had done before him. Further, he was hoping to make his polemic somehow more palatable by shackling it to the tale of the financial misfortunes of Molly Henshaw.

“In so many ways,” he finished up, indicating with a flick of his hand a sheaf of what I assumed to be research notes on his desk, “they are an extraordinary group of men!”

For a writer, my husband had a most scientific mind, always analyzing the world about him. Indeed, he had a great interest in the insect kingdom going back as far as my earliest memories of him in our youth, had an affection for the works of Darwin most in our acquaintance would be reluctant to own, and seemed to wage a continual war between the Reason and Romanticism within him.

“It is fine to sit at home and safely assume not only is Justice always blind, but she is fair as well,” he said. “If only such were the case. Rather, it would appear whether one can afford to pay off the right people and whether one can afford to obtain counsel that is even remotely competent dictates the order of the day. If we could just make a case for—”

“Where do I belong in all this?” I asked, stemming the flow.

It was not that I did not care about what he was saying. But rather I knew my husband well enough to know, should I let him really get going on a topic for which he felt so much passion, by the time he finished I would forget all about what I had come to him for in the first place.

“Well,” he said, resuming a more amiable tone of voice, “could you not see yourself corresponding with one of these wretches? Not all of them are the basest creatures of the earth and some are even not stupid. I think, were I in jail for a crime I did not commit, or without family and friends to care any longer whether I lived or died or what my daily existence was, well, I think I might appreciate corresponding with some reasonably intelligent person from the outside world.”

“Are you suggesting I write to a male prisoner?” I was shocked. “Would it not be more natural for me to write to another woman?”

To which he just shrugged.

“It is to the male part of the prison I go to do my research,” he said. “It is there I am friendly with the governor.”

I felt a further almost unnameable outrage at his suggestion.

“You want me, your wife, to correspond with dangerous men?”

But he refused to rise to meet my outrage.

“Did I not just say, Emma,” he said, with a coolly patient impatience, “that some of these men have been hard done by? Besides, they are in prison; you are out here. Where is the danger to you in that? There is none. It is not, after all, as though I were suggesting you go bodily to a slum area and seek out someone to help there. This is different from that. Can you not see yourself, in your efforts to be this ‘better person’ you claim a desire to be, trying to give some sort of solace to some unfortunate person who will never again enjoy the freedoms you so daily take for granted?”

I at last conceded I could indeed see myself assuming such a task.

“Very well.” He took up his glasses again and oh so gently brushed his hand against my skirts where they covered my buttocks; a hint it was time I left him to Molly Henshaw. “At the first available opportunity, I shall ask the governor if there is a suitable prisoner, one who preferably is literate enough to know what to do with pen and paper.”

My mission successful, I moved back through the corridor quickly. The unusual corridor—all glass on one side, solid wall on the other, with black-and-white tiles underfoot—separated the family section of the house from the more public rooms and John’s library. I usually moved through it quickly, trying to avoid an uneasy dual feeling of protection and exposure.

But sometimes, a few times, I courted it.

When I knew John was gone from the household, when Weston was elsewhere, I would sometimes sit on the tiles, knees tucked up under my chin, skirts spread, the black-and-white diamonds swirling outward around me, the hot glass at my front, the cool wall—so dark a blue as to almost be black—at my back, a lightness seen, a darkness glimpsed.

I had an awareness, in those moments, of being a person me but not me, or perhaps a person more myself than I was anywhere else. In those moments, I had an awareness of myself as being a far more interesting woman when alone than when in the noise of company.

But those moments alone were rare. Or felt so. It seemed nearly every moment of my days was taken up by the demands of John and Weston, the day-to-day concerns of running a household.

And perhaps, I thought as I hurried through, once this correspondence John had suggested began, perhaps I would be able to leave those moments alone in the corridor behind me forever. Perhaps, in the act of bringing peace to someone else, I would bring peace to myself as well.