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Back in 1838, in the absence of both her mother and father, Rosalie is almost able to relax. Spring is arriving in manageable pieces, like things seen in the shards of a broken mirror, heard from a passing carriage—birds, bugs, leaves, flowers, rain, clouds. A contented hum rises from the earth all around the cabin. Overnight, the cherry tree has burst into spectacular bloom. It is unseasonably warm.
Still no word from the great bullfrog, but the wood frogs are awake and in the evenings when Asia is in bed, Rosalie pulls her mother’s ladder-back chair out onto the doorstep to listen to them. Under the willows, right where the stream turns to marsh, they call out in a chorus strangely like the sound of galloping horses.
She watches for omens, signs of how things are going with her father and mother in Charleston. One night, she sees an owl fall and rise again with something small and tender in its feet. It settles in a nearby tree to eat. Strings of viscera dangle from its beak. Rosalie decides she doesn’t believe in omens. She takes her chair back inside. She avoids the graveyard even more than usual as the ghosts have begun predicting vague sorts of doom—hunters with hounds with teeth like the wolf in the fold they loosed him with a single lash who’ll make the shroud if it’s not in the dark these violent delights have violent ends. It’s not even clear they mean to distress with these ominous mutterings. They themselves seem unperturbed.
When night comes, June entertains her with recitations by candlelight. He practices the big soliloquies with big gestures. On the rough wood wall behind him, his shadow throws out its arms. None of the children has ever been allowed to see their father perform. He wants none of them following him into the theater. But every surface in the house is stacked with playbills, clippings, gloves, wigs, and hats. No child has to go far to find Macbeth’s dagger or Hamlet’s cloak. Richard’s hump lies often on Father’s desk under his farm catalogues and a great many reminders of money owed. During the summers, when Father’s at home, he reads to them every evening. He talks about diction, inflection, rhythm. He is training them all for the thing they’ve been forbidden to do.
June has started to dream of an acting career in Philadelphia, where he knows some of the company and has been promised his chance. This is as much against his father’s wishes as his father’s own acting career was against his father’s wishes. There are other family traditions that June will eventually carry on as well, but he doesn’t know what they are yet.
Rosalie sees that June is hoping to astonish Father with his success, and she sees that he won’t. He speaks too quickly and his voice scales up when he wants to show a great emotion. This saddens her, but June will be all right.
He’s too steady to belong in this family anyway. She thinks that she will miss him dreadfully when he goes. Not that he was ever much company to her, but at least he was there.
* * *
—
Father, Mother, and little Edwin come home. They arrive late at night when no one is expecting them. Rosalie wakes to the keening of the dogs. She wraps her shawl over her nightdress and goes barefoot downstairs to fix them something to eat. Edwin is sleeping, draped over Father’s shoulder like a sack. She approaches Father, intending to kiss him, but he fends her off by handing her Edwin instead. She sees why. Her father’s face is a ruin.
What happened is something like this: Her father climbed through the window of Thomas Flynn’s room at the Planter’s Hotel in the dead of night and attacked him with a fire poker as he slept. It seems he meant to kill him. Mr. Flynn fought back. He picked up a pewter pot from a nearby table and smashed it into Father’s face, breaking his nose.
Everyone deeply regrets it all; the friendship is unaffected. Mr. Flynn is much more upset than Father. He’ll never be able to speak of it without tears. He blames himself for the blighting of Father’s career, though no one else appears to notice it’s blighted. The bookings, the big audiences, the rapturous reviews continue.
Rosalie’s father will never be handsome again, but no one minds that. What matters is his voice, which has always been the better part of his genius—melodious, capable of such shadings and subtleties. Without his voice, Father’s acting is more craft and less genius.
He recovers quickly. Only a few days later, he is out and about, The Baltimore Sun reporting that “the mad tragedian has arrived in our city.”
And in another paper: “Is this man a maniac?”
No one is able to explain to Rosalie what the fight was about. It seems none of them know. Her father says that he gave Iago’s speech as he bludgeoned Mr. Flynn.
And nothing can or shall content my soul
Till I am evened with him, wife for wife,
Or, failing so, yet that I put the Moor
At least into a jealousy so strong
That judgment cannot cure!
Until suddenly the story changes and now he thought he was Othello, and what he shouted was,
Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore!
Mr. Flynn’s version, confided to Mother, confided to Rosalie, is considerably less Shakespearean. Mr. Flynn said Father was angry because Mr. Flynn was preventing Father from having a fair shake at Mother. Rosalie doesn’t know what a fair shake is and she knows better than to ask. Mother didn’t see the fight herself, but she thinks that poor little Edwin may have seen something. “He had the biggest, saddest eyes after,” she tells Rosalie. Edwin always has the biggest, saddest eyes. “Like saucers. When I picked him up, he buried his head under my arm as if hoping no one would find him there.”
Rosalie knows that her father, who is so tender that he weeps over dead birds and won’t kill even the poisonous snakes, a man who can’t pick a flower because to do so means the end of that fragrant blameless life—that this same father can be cruel when opposed. When opposed and drunk, he’s dangerous. She knows that her mother, who treats him with extraordinary reverence, is also deeply afraid of him. Rosalie loves him very much and is deeply afraid of him, too.
These are things the other children do not know and do not feel, and Rosalie is very sorry to think that Edwin may be learning them at such a sweet age.
She asks Edwin about his trip to Charleston. “Such a big trip for such a big boy,” she tells him. Fortunately, the only thing Edwin seems to remember is being put to bed among the costumes in Father’s trunk.
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