The bit elided in this account is the letter he wrote during his old friend’s presidency, calling him a damned scoundrel and threatening to cut his throat as he slept. Possibly he was joking. The Cherokee have a special name for Jackson, too—they call him the Indian Killer. This also goes unsaid.
Father soon cheers up again, complimenting Rosalie on the leeks and potatoes, which she did not cook, Mother on the fish. Yes, fish! Suddenly Father, who once thought it murder to eat an oyster, has decided they should all be eating fish. None of the children like fish, so this is nothing to celebrate. Plus Rosalie has told Edwin how Father once said that he’d killed Mary Ann and Elizabeth by eating meat, so Edwin wonders which of them is being put at risk this time on account of a cod he doesn’t even want.
Himself, of course. He looks up from his plate to see Father gazing at him fondly. “I’ve made a decision about our Ned,” Father says. He leans back in his chair, drawing it out. “Momentous.” He is all twinkle and trill. At last he gets to it. “Ned will be a cabinetmaker.”
This is a shot to the heart.
“He’s very skilled with his hands,” Father says genially, obviously believing Edwin will be pleased with the compliment and the plan. “Look how quickly he picked up the banjo.”
Edwin knows three chords at most, can play five tunes. He has always, always wanted to be an actor and everyone knows this. One of his early memories is of sitting with Mother in Father’s dressing room, asking her what that sound was, the thunder four thousand people make when they all clap their hands at the same time.
Father dislikes being opposed, so Edwin says nothing, even as his dreams cry out in their dying. The more Father talks of it, the more fixed it will become.
Edwin doesn’t expect Mother to argue with Father. She never has. She never will. All he expects of her is silence. Silence, and maybe, after Father has quit the room, sympathy. Instead, his mother speaks. “Jesus was a carpenter,” she says.
Now Edwin is so angry he can hardly swallow. As if Jesus is remembered for his woodwork! “June gets to be an actor,” he says throatily.
It’s enough resistance to set Father off. His hands smack down on the table, making the plates rattle. He begins to rail about the sacrifices he makes, the long hard touring, the exhausting falsity of it all. “All so that you can have a real life,” he says. “What pleasure you will take in making something fine, something you can touch and smell and see, the product of your own hands. I envy you, by God I do.”
There is a long silence in which Asia stares at Edwin balefully. Father was in such a good mood; they were having such fun, and then Edwin had to go and ruin everything. “?‘A man must rule his family in his own way,’?” Father says.
But what about Edwin’s meteor and caul? What about the more than 240,000 meteors falling over the East Coast and all the way to the Rocky Mountains at his birth? Will no one here speak up for the stars?
More silence. Father pulls his bread apart with his hands and puts a corner of it into his mouth. His teeth have been paining him for some time now. He shifts the bread about, seeking a place where he can chew comfortably. Edwin takes a small, grim satisfaction in seeing this. “June acts,” Father says finally, swallowing. “But June is no actor.”
The conversation is over. The decision is made.
In fact, it’s been a long time since anyone remembered Edwin’s stars. They’ve been superseded by Johnny’s fiery arm. Even though Edwin’s stars were seen all over the city while Mother was the only witness to Johnny’s magical fire. Edwin’s stars were in the paper!
At my nativity
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes.
And why does Johnny get to be an avenger while Edwin has to see ghosts? Why does June get to be an actor while Edwin has to be a cabinetmaker? It’s the unfairness that Edwin objects to.
iv
After dinner, Father leaves to call on his friend John Hill Hewitt. Hewitt is one of Baltimore’s brawling poets, and once punched Edgar Allan Poe (another of Father’s friends—he knows everyone!) in the face in a dispute over a literary prize. Father’s supposed to be back home for supper or, failing that, before the children go to bed, but no one is surprised when he isn’t. If Father has money and friends (the friends optional—strangers will do in a pinch), he finds his way to the closest bar.
Mother waits for him until supper is cold. Then, claiming a headache, she goes to lie down. Rosalie follows. The other children serve themselves and eat in silence. Joe begins to cry and can’t explain why. Nobody tells the children to go to bed and so they don’t, except for Joe, who falls asleep in the parlor and is carried upstairs, his legs spilling from Edwin’s arms and bumping against the banister and doorframe.
Sometime after midnight, they hear Father stumbling up the stoop and hurry to their bedrooms before they’re seen. They leave a telltale fire crackling in the parlor.
Father is trying to be quiet. They hear this. They hear the wind, whistling through a crack in the bedroom window. They hear doors opening and closing. They hear Rosalie making her thumping way upstairs. The boys’ bedroom is icy and Edwin leaves his socks on when he gets under the covers. He shivers and his teeth rattle until he’s finally warm enough to fall asleep.
* * *
—
In the morning, Rosalie makes the children breakfast and sees them off to school. Her eyes are red from crying, but she refuses to admit this, claiming instead to be coming down with a cold. Father has already left. Mother doesn’t come out of her bedroom. A hushed gloom settles like a fog on the house.
The recent rain smeared mud and puddles of pig shit on the pavement. Edwin has barely left the stoop before he steps in something vile. He tries to scrape his shoe clean on the bricks, using some language he is not supposed to use, and the whole thing—his fouled shoes, his foul mouth—makes Johnny and Asia laugh.
They walk three abreast. “Mother is quarreling with Father,” Asia says, as if she’s the only one to notice. They assume this has to do with money. Father has spent his money somewhere and now Mother doesn’t know how to pay the bills. They’ve all seen this play before.
The O’Laughlens are half a block up the street. “Wilkes!” they cry and he dashes ahead to walk with them. Edwin’s friend John Sleeper appears. He says hello to Edwin and nothing at all to Asia, but he reaches over, takes her books from her. Sleeper is a tall, awkward boy with a messy head of curls. They walk a few blocks and then Sleeper hands her books back, as Asia’s school is to the right and the boys’ to the left.