Under the Wide and Starry Sky

CHAPTER 13

Belle Osbourne, wrapped in a robe, collapsed on the old stu?ed chair in their bedroom. “There is nothing for me to wear tonight,” she said to her mother. “Nothing.”
“Wear the blue check dress, why don’t you?”

“It makes me look as if I’m ten.”

Fanny  was  seated  at  the  dressing  table.  “You’re  moving  too  fast,  Belle.”  She  turned around in her seat. “These young men here …”

“I want to wear something pretty for once.”

Fanny’s palm made a dipping arc. “A lady keeps her voice low and sweet.” Belle hissed with frustration.

“When I met your father,” Fanny mused, “I was your age, and …” “And you were standing on stilts.” Belle sighed.

“The point is …”

“… you were just a child. I know all that, a hundred times over, Mother.” “In those days, they started things too early. It was too, too early.” “No, they didn’t.”

“Isobel!” Fanny directed a look at the girl that instantly set aright their positions. Belle had always been a pleasant child, eager to help. Lately, she had grown willful, and in a heartbeat, the air between them could thicken with tension.

The animosity wasn’t constant. Today, for example, they had all gone canoeing on the river. A contest evolved, and Fanny’s boat was overturned. When Bob Stevenson gallantly pulled her out of the water, Belle laughed and called to her, “How pretty you look all wet, Mama!”  Soon  enough,  Belle  was  dunked,  too,  but  Fanny  could  not  return  a  tender compliment  to  her  daughter.  The  mother,  as  well  as  anyone  else  with  eyes,  saw  the blooming girl’s anatomy prominently outlined beneath her black blouse. It had left Fanny feeling oddly sad.

“You can’t go back, is what I am saying to you.” Fanny’s voice softened. “You sashay out of your childhood, and the world makes sure you can’t have it again. Think about what you’re doing.”

“It’s too late for that, Mama,” Belle murmured. She walked into the adjoining room and shut the door.

Fanny  brushed  her  hair  absently.  Too  much  had  happened.  How  could  a  shred  of childhood be left in Belle after she’d witnessed her brother’s long death? Even before that nightmare,  Belle’s  na?veté  had  peeled  away  in  the  acid  atmosphere  of  the  Oakland household.

When the girl stomped back in, she was wearing her mother’s melon-colored dress. It was clear  she  had  borrowed  a  corset,  too,  for  her  elevated  breasts  threatened  to  unleash themselves from the neckline.

“All right, Belle,” Fanny said wearily. “Then I can wear it?”

“Come here, sit down.” The mother stood up and allowed her daughter to sit on the stool in front of the mirror.

“Do  you see  how  your  eyes  appear  rather  prominent  when  your  hair  is  pulled back tight?”

“It crinkles up if I don’t pull it back after I wash it.” “First of all, never say ‘warsh’. That is the worst sort of twang.” Belle looked puzzled. “Isn’t that how you say it?”

“Not anymore.” Fanny yanked strands loose from the band that held her daughter’s hair up in a knot. Belle ?inched but kept quiet. With small nail scissors, the mother cut pieces of hair around the girl’s hairline. “Short curls around your face will soften your features.”
Fanny ran the brush through her daughter’s hair, pulled back the black mass, and shook it. Small snippets of wavy hair fell around the girl’s brow and cheeks. Belle beamed at her reflection.

“When I was little,” Fanny said, “my grandmother was ashamed of me because my skin was dark, at least compared to hers. Every morning she sewed a sunbonnet into my braided hair and made me wear long nankeen gloves up to my shoulders. Imagine going out every day like that! Everyone knew why I had to wear the gloves, and no one else had a hat sewn on her head. I was a shy child at that point, and I felt terribly embarrassed. When I came in from playing and my face had turned the color of a pecan anyway, she scrubbed my skin raw. It wasn’t enough that everyone wanted blond looks; my grandmother believed people with dark skin were naturally wicked.”

Another  memory  ?ooded  Fanny’s  mind;  she  was  surprised  that  it  still  wounded  her. “What are you?” a neighborhood girl had once asked her.

She’d known even at the age of seven that the girl was inquiring for one of her parents, since Fanny had overheard the child’s father use the phrase “some kind of half-breed” when she was visiting once.

“Who wants to know?” Fanny asked in response. “My pa.”

“Dutch and Swedish,” Fanny had replied.

The girl had seemed unsatis?ed, as if she’d heard that answer before. “But what are you really?”

“My mother never stopped telling me I was beautiful,” Fanny told Belle. “I didn’t believe her for a long time. Now I prefer my dark skin to that unnatural ‘?esh’ color in my paint box.” She replaced the scissors in a small leather case. “You got my coloring, honey, just as I got it from my own mother. Don’t bother with mauve, no matter what the French tell you is fashionable. It doesn’t set o? your skin. Always wear a spark of color, and ?nd some touch that is all your own. Maybe it’s a particular way you wear your hat. Something.” Fanny reached over her daughter’s shoulder and yanked up the bodice of the melon dress. “A collarbone is far more alluring than exposed breasts. A man wants to imagine. Did you see that local girl who came around yesterday and was talking to the writers? She was all dressed up, poor thing. And do you know what the men did when she left? They laughed. One of them said, ‘She’s wearing her hunting clothes.’”

Belle  stood  back  from  the  mirror  to  study  her  new  hairstyle  from  di?erent  angles. “Mama, do you think that Irish painter Frank O’Meara likes me?”

“Did you even hear what I just said, Belle?”

“Yes, I did.”

Fanny  sighed.  “I  don’t  know  what  Frank  O’Meara  likes.  Except  maybe  that  thorny shilalagh he carries around.”

“Oh, his singing voice … “

“It won’t put bread on the table, darlin’.” “He’s rich, too.”

“Well, that helps.”

“Helps? Aren’t you the one who always says it’s as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor man? I thought you would approve.”

Bob Stevenson had told Fanny that O’Meara had wealthy Irish Catholic parents. She tried

to weigh the parts of that equation. He might be rich as Croesus, but the parents would never permit the boy to marry a Protestant girl. There was no harm in allowing Belle her point for now, though. “He does have a nice voice,” Fanny said.

Belle turned and gave her mother a conspiratorial look. “Louis Stevenson was sparkin’ on you last night.”

Fanny waved away the remark. “I don’t care a particle about that.” A grin spread over Belle’s face. “Frank says he’s from a wealthy family and is in line to
inherit a lot of money, but he won’t live that long because of his dissipation. Frank thinks Bob and Louis are both mad.”

“Do you know what I think? I think this inn is full of gossips. Go down to dinner. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

At the closet, Fanny reached for one of her black dresses but pulled out the white instead. It has been three months. She had allowed herself a blue shawl or white blouse since she’d arrived, but not without the black skirt or gray jacket. Fanny sighed bitterly. Why did any of those rules matter? No mourning clothes could begin to express the weight of that loss. Her baby was gone. No mourning clothes could lighten that weight. There would never be another day in her life when her mind and heart were not bound up in black weeds. She put on the white dress.

Fanny heard loud conversation coming from the dining room when she descended the stairs. As she entered the room, Louis Stevenson stood up and called out, “Guid een’! “
“Good evening,” she returned.

“Ah, this one is going to take a bit of work,” Louis said to his cousin. He pulled out a chair between his and Bob’s. “Tonight, Fanny Osbourne, with your permission, I suggest we undertake a wee lesson. In fact, we shall all undertake a lesson in the Scots tongue,” he said to the rest of the table.

“Hopeless,” said the German artist.  “You can’t teach an American or a  Frenchman to pronounce Scots.”

“Nonsense,” said Will Low. “Give us a try.”

Louis’s eyes went bright.  “All right! Let’s start with the simplest phrase.  ‘Guid een’.’ It starts here.” He pointed to his neck. “Guid,” he growled, ?ngering the tendons beneath his jaw. “One gags from the nether folds of the throat.”

“One could strain oneself,” Fanny replied.

“Ah, now, give it a try.”

“Ged eeenin’,” she said, her lips stretching. “She’s on to it!” Bob said.

“Got eenen’,” someone ventured.

“Try it,” Fanny said to Margaret Wright, who had arrived the day before, but her friend demurred, uncharacteristically shy in the midst of these madcap jokers.
Sitting beside Margaret at the end of the table was Joseph Howard, a famously homely Louisianan  whom  the  others  had  found  strange  from  the  start.  Fanny  suspected  the Europeans had never heard a  true Southern accent, for when he spoke, they tended to gawk in wonder at the large squareheaded man. He was not the least bit strange to Fanny. He might have been one of her eccentric uncles, proud of his backwater roots. While the others painted the bridge, he sat before his easel, creating a blazing scene from the Battle of New Orleans. In the afternoons, when everyone climbed into canoes, Howard would squeeze  into a  washtub he  had persuaded Madame  Chevillon  to  part  with  and merrily paddle in their midst.

“Gooood evenin’’,” the contrarian called out now in his Southern drawl. Fanny began to smile along with everyone else. She felt as if she had fallen into some
hollow that might have been in the remote hills of either Scotland or perhaps Tennessee. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so silly. As the pot-au-feu was passed, Bob served her from the tureen while Louis refilled her wineglass. Oh, it felt fine.
Was  it  the  accents  that  gave  the  mad  Stevensons  their  charm?  They  clearly  loved speaking in broad Scots, switching from their Edinburgh English into a tongue that was nearly incomprehensible to her ear. And they reveled in playing o? of each other, ?nishing each other’s sentences. The two of them did not look to be kin. Louis had dark blond hair and wide-set brown eyes that went hazel in the light, full lips, a narrow chest, and a wispy patch of hair beneath his mouth. His face was a theater of emotions, his features shifting in a twinkling from gay to tragic as his supple mind ranged across subjects that moved him. He seemed to have no protective veil; his feelings lay open as a child’s.
Bob was three years older than his cousin and the more sophisticated of the two. He had dark, handsome features and a tall, athletic body; he was, quite simply, one of the ?nestlooking men Fanny had ever seen. He was adept at everything—art, music, philosophy. Everyone regarded him as the best talker in any room. How di?erent his tone was now,

compared to his clipped formality when she first met him.

She found it touching when she remembered how Bob, dead set against her at ?rst, had gently helped to revive her. Oh, the others had been attentive and kind. But it was Bob’s company she wanted most. Lately, she’d allowed herself to imagine what was unthinkable before. What would it be like to live in London or Paris with a man like Bob Stevenson—a re?ned, educated, charming European? Over here, divorce was not the moral failure it was in America. What would it be like to never go back, to raise young Sam over here, to send him to fine schools?

She would want a modern man who wouldn’t expect an old family dowry. What she had to o?er was herself—no innocent, to be sure, but wise and still pretty at thirty-six. Her sisters, and even Sam told her she was at the height of her beauty. It wasn’t too late for her to ?nd another husband, and it wasn’t a sel?sh impulse to be on the lookout for one. The best thing she could do for her children’s future would be to remarry, and well.
Fanny’s reverie fell away as the hilarity in the room grew louder.

“Dae ye speak Scots?” Louis was shouting. He was leaning forward in his chair, his lank hair falling over one eye.

Her tablemates brayed the phrase back to him. “Juist a wee,” he replied.

“Joost a way!” they sang back. “Awa’, an’ bile yer heids!” he said. The diners stared at one another, confused. “What did he say?” Belle asked.

“Go boil your heads,” Henley said matter-of-factly.

More laughter followed, but within the noise, Fanny heard little choking sounds coming from her left. She turned to see Louis holding his chest and gasping for breath.
She had seen real choking once when her father had saved a man by lifting him up and squeezing him; a chunk of meat had popped like a cork from the man’s mouth and shot across the room. She stood up, prepared to pound or squeeze Louis, just as he slid from his chair onto the floor. Tears were running from his eyes.

“What is it?” Fanny shouted to Bob above the din. “Madderam, madam,” he said. “Bend back his hand.”

She didn’t know the word, but bending his hand wouldn’t help. She dropped to her knees,

wrapped her arms around his chest, and squeezed. When she glanced at Louis’s scarlet face, she realized he was laughing hysterically, like a man possessed.

“Bend back his hand!” Bob shouted again.

Fanny felt disoriented. She looked, confused, from one cousin to the other. “Never mind,” Bob said.  “I’ll do it.” He took Louis’s hand and bent the slender ?ngers
back so hard,  Fanny  thought they  would snap  o?.  When  Louis’s laughter coughed and sputtered to a stop, he climbed back on his chair and began chatting as if nothing had happened.

Fanny looked around the table when she sat down. Had more wine been drunk than she’d realized? Louis’s friends seemed unperturbed by such a strange scene.
“What is madderam?” Fanny asked Bob.

“Old Shetland word. Means ‘madness.’ Pure, joyous insanity.”

After dinner, the crowd convened outside under the arbor, where Chinese lanterns hung from the lattice. There was a hammock where Fanny settled when it was o?ered to her. In the canoe dumping games, her foot had been caught between two boats, and her ankle was throbbing. The others arranged themselves in chairs around her or sat cross-legged on the ground. One fellow shared a  bottle of wine with  his pet monkey. A pretty grisette, an expert at swallowing gold?sh, circled the group with a new amusement. She dangled a grape on a string over their heads while each person tried to catch it in his teeth.
A voice said, “I don’t want this day to end.” And another: “Let’s tie the canoes together, climb in, and see where we wake up in the morning.”

They  talked into the night about Monet,  Degas,  and Millet.  Balzac’s novels and Irish independence. Money. Love. Photography. Did pictures or words have more power? Fanny, like the others, spoke freely into the near darkness, the circle lit by only the moon and a few candles guttering in the warm breeze.

Someone asked Bob Stevenson if he still intended to commit suicide when his inheritance ran out. Just a few days earlier, Fanny had heard Bob’s outrageous declaration. When his father died, he’d left his son a small sum of money. Bob had divided up his inheritance into ten parts and was busily spending the allotted fraction each year in creative, pleasurable ways. Fanny calculated that his merry march toward cessation had been in progress for about seven years.

“No man has the right to toss away his own life.” It was Louis’s voice, tremulous with

emotion. “Just as he has no right to dispose of his neighbor’s. It’s still a murder.”
“Your life doesn’t belong to just you,” Fanny said.

“Obviously, I disagree with you,” Bob said. “I got thrown into life without my consent, and I have every right to decide when and how I will leave this earth. What’s more, suicide is a ?ne subject for a story, Lou.” He drew on his cigarette thoughtfully and tipped his chair on its two back legs. “Let us imagine for a moment that there is a private organization, not advertised in any way but known by word of mouth among a certain group of men—a club … a suicide club. Once a month there is a card game run by the president of the club. The attendees pay a fee to get in, have their ?ll of champagne, and then sit down to a game of cards. They take turns drawing cards from the stack at the center of the table. The fellow who draws the ace of spades is the honoree that month. The winner, you might say, of his own demise.”

“Why does he need to join a club to commit suicide?” Belle asked.

“Because there is another important card player at the table,” Louis said, picking up the thread of the story. “That is the man who draws the ace of clubs. It falls to him to dispatch the first winner that very night.”

“Kill him, you mean?” Belle asked. “Exactly,” Louis said.

“That’s an interesting twist,” Fanny mused.  “I think it is harder to be a murderer than simply a man who wants to end his own life.”

Louis and Bob played back and forth with the idea, embellishing here, rejecting there, until someone produced a guitar and quieted the talk.

Fanny looked up through a circular opening in the arbor at the black sky, awash in stars. She considered the idea of staying right where she was, of sleeping in the hammock so as to breathe in the fragrance of the trellis roses. Soon enough, couples were standing, saying good night. She noticed Belle and Frank O’Meara slip into the shadows. Fanny sat up in the hammock and climbed out. Louis leaped to his feet, took her arm, and helped her back to the building.

“Upon my soul,” he blurted,  “you are the most magni?cent woman I’ve ever met.” He was looking down at her, and in the dim lantern light of the inn, she saw tears in his eyes yet again. “I think I am falling in love with you,” he said.

Fanny felt her chest shrink with embarrassment. Happily, the stairs to her bedroom were

only seconds away.

“Louis.” She patted his shoulder. “You are sweet. Now get some sleep.”