Although Father earned a thousand and eighty-four dollars in his final New Orleans engagement, only five hundred of that makes it home. Father’s salary ceases, of course, and the rents on certain properties in England now go to Richard.
Mother decides that the only way forward is to let the place on North Exeter and return to the farm. This is complicated by the state of the new house there. Tudor Hall is only recently completed and the architect, James Gifford, not yet paid. Gifford removes the heavy tin roof. He lets Mother know that, until his money arrives, the unmaking of Tudor Hall will continue. Mother gives him most of what’s left in the coffers and the house is re-roofed. They must manage to support themselves now on the rent from the Baltimore house and the yield from the farm.
* * *
—
At the time of Father’s death, Asia is seventeen, Johnny fourteen, and Joe twelve. Once again, the family cracks and shifts. The gravitational center that was Father is gone, with June and Edwin flung all the way to California and Johnny and Joe to a boarding school in Catonsville, some seven miles southwest of Baltimore. St. Timothy’s Hall is the sort of school that charges top dollar for a regimen of cold, exertion, and hunger, a basic program of toughen-up. Mother selected it.
The rector, Reverend Libertus Van Bokkelen, comes from New York and is a secret abolitionist. The students are none of the above, proud Southerners one and all, many from prominent families. One of Johnny’s classmates is the nephew of Robert E. Lee. St. Timothy’s has everything Mother wants for her highest-and her lowest-spirited son—a good education, military discipline, and social connections. She doesn’t care that these connections are with slavers.
Johnny makes friends quickly. He will do so all his life. And yet, he hates the school. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, he writes in his first letter home. The classes are too hard for him, the rules too strict, the conditions too punishing. Only socially does he excel.
Meanwhile:
Off in California, Edwin is recovering his vim and his vitality.
He’s moved in with a friend of his father’s, an actor named Dave Anderson. Anderson is an older man, but not the parental sort. He doesn’t provide the guidance or guardianship that Old Spudge did. After his grim and isolated adolescence, Edwin is finally having fun.
Using only boxes and tree boughs, Edwin and Anderson have knocked up a small, rickety house out in the dunes towards the end of Mission Road. Edwin refers to this house as the rancho and himself as a ranchero. His letters home are filled with those amusing adventures that won’t distress his mother—pranks and pratfalls.
He’s having plenty of the distressing sort as well. Once, up in Sacramento, he wanders off drunk, falls into the river, and nearly drowns. A passerby almost doesn’t stop, mistaking him for a pile of laundry washing about in the current. Then he sees a hand floating at the end of a sleeve. He dives in, drags Edwin to the riverbank, and runs to a nearby saloon for help. Edwin’s missing caul comes to the rescue. After an anxious interval, he’s revived with slaps and shouts and brandy. More brandy is purchased to toast his narrow escape.
He’s working now in a new company June has formed. Mother is solaced to think of them taking care of each other. In fact, they’re seriously at odds. June has no patience with Edwin’s drinking. Having always been careful himself around alcohol, he has no intention of continually rescuing Edwin if he won’t be the same. June takes small roles, or no roles at all, in order to avoid comparisons, let his unseasoned little brother shine. When Edwin repays this by showing up late, unprepared, unsure of his lines, and unconcerned about any of it, June demotes him back to bit parts.
Edwin has a lot to learn, June thinks. June is very full of himself, thinks Edwin. How happy they are, think Asia, Johnny, and Joe. Those deserters. What lives they are leading!
Asia
i
For a brief time, a few hours though it seems much longer, Asia is the only member of the family who knows that Father is dead. The captain of the Chenoweth had telegraphed Mother to say that Father was very ill and she must come at once to Cincinnati to meet the boat. Mother departed immediately, leaving Asia and Rosalie to determine for themselves just how concerned they should be. Rosalie reminded Asia that there’d been many similar alarms over the years. Still, after a short period of dither and delay, Rosalie had decided that Johnny and Joe must come home from school. She’d gone off to fetch them.
So when the second wire arrives, Asia is the only one home. She reads it. She puts it on Father’s desk. She puts some of his other papers on top of it. For one mad moment, it seems like a secret she can keep. Maybe the rest of the family need never know. Father is so rarely home.
Even better would be not knowing herself. If only she’d gone with Mother, she’d be on a train right now, traveling in the same anxious ignorance the rest of them are enjoying. She’d be worried, but not much. She’d be assuring Mother that Father is indestructible, which is what she really believes, even now, even after the wire.
Instead she’s been left to deal alone with the fact that Father will never again walk in the door, bringing all the noise and excitement of the great world with him. In his absence, the house has always felt inconsequential to Asia, a place of petty concerns and niggling quarrels, no one in charge and someone’s feelings, usually hers, perpetually hurt by one careless remark or another.
Nothing will ever be the same, she thinks, which sounds more like a line from a play than something a person says, and yet how true it is. All is lost, she thinks next, which is less true but not untrue. She thinks that she’s performing grief rather than feeling it. What she feels is nothing.
She stands for a long time looking out the parlor window, where Father’s death has not changed the view. The clouds are low and unbroken, a gray lid set over the city. A strong wind is ripping the few remaining leaves from the trees, tossing them into the air, trapping them against the fences and the snowdrifts. A man passes on a plodding bay horse. Another, on foot, keeps his hat on his head with his hand. There was no reason for Mother not to have taken her along. Father would have been pleased to see her face.
She turns back to the room. The flocked wallpaper she’d always found so cheerful now seems dingy. She remembers how, shortly after moving in, an actress friend of Father’s came to visit. “This isn’t a house,” she’d said. “This is a home,” which pleased Mother so much that roses came into her cheeks. Asia sees that the house is shabbier now, a little worn, a little worn-out.