“My dear boy,” Rosalie says.
“I killed him,” Edwin tells her. “I had just one job, to protect our father, and I grew tired of it and let him go off on his own and he died all alone on that ship because of me.” Edwin’s shoulders are shaking, his hands over his face. A crow calls and launches from a nearby tree. Rosalie watches it skim the blue sky like a stone skipping over water. Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge. To the children of Shakespeare all the world’s a metaphor.
But she’s left speechless. Should she insist that he’s not to blame? On what evidence? Everyone in the family has had that same thought, however they try not to. It’s been there the whole time, like a fly at the window, buzzing in the back of their boundless gratitude, wonder, and love. She reaches to put her arms around him, but at her touch, he moves away. He won’t take his hands from his face. He sobs so hard his whole body shakes. He wipes his face with the same handkerchief he used to clean Father’s headstone and now there’s a streak of wet dirt on his cheek. Rosalie takes off her glove and erases it with her fingers. She has to rub hard.
She can find no words that might absolve him. “You saved us,” she says instead. They won’t be having that talk about John. Not now, and probably not ever.
Edwin
iii
Years ago, Edwin saw himself as a comic actor, while his friend Sleeper Clarke planned a career as a tragedian. Those roles have flipped. Sleeper never had the face for tragedy—too elastic—nor the hair—a muddle of curls. He comes that close to handsome without ever actually arriving. Whereas Edwin . . . No one, another actor will note someday soon, can stand against those eyes.
Sleeper is currently the principal Low Comic for the Arch Street Theatre company in Philadelphia. He stars in those farces that close the evening, send the audience home laughing. Whether he’s good at this or not is debatable. But he is popular.
At Edwin’s urging, Sleeper secures a position in the company for John. The spring of 1857 finds John in Philadelphia, rooming with Sleeper and Sleeper’s mother. He performs bit parts, billed as J. B. Wilkes. Though everyone in the theater world knows who his father is, it’s hoped that many in the audience do not. His performances are hit-and-miss and he’s anxious to do nothing that will tarnish the Booth name.
Back in Baltimore, Edwin says to Asia, “What a good friend Sleeper has always been to us!”
Asia sticks out her tongue.
They are up in the boys’ bedroom. Asia’s lying on John’s empty bed with Edwin’s pillow under her head, watching as Edwin packs. He’s recently been in Boston (where Louisa May Alcott saw him perform and liked him better than his father) and is now headed for New York.
After the years of larking about in California, Edwin has gotten more serious. He has a manager, Benjamin Baker, or Uncle Ben, as he likes to be called. Uncle Ben has great plans (and, it will turn out, sticky fingers). But all Edwin knows now is that he’s managed to book a two-week run at Burton’s Theatre.
Out in the dark, it’s raining hard, a spring rain, the thunder loud and close, the lightning in glaring sheets. Lear weather.
Two lamps are lit in the bedroom but their light doesn’t reach the corners. Periodically the window blazes, sharp and dazzling, followed by a drum roll of thunder and a purple square of afterimage. Edwin remembers Coleridge’s line about reading Shakespeare by lightning flashes.
Asia is telling him about an acquaintance, a Colonel Green who claims to be married, but Asia thinks he’s not. She is laying out her evidence. First off: the state of his collars.
Edwin has never met Colonel Green and isn’t listening. He’s thinking about a girl. A few months back, during his Richmond engagement, a sixteen-year-old named Mary Devlin had played Juliet to his Romeo, Katherine to his Petruchio. At her young age, she was already a professional—a member of the John Ford’s Marshall Theatre company, brown-haired and brown-eyed, not beautiful, but pretty and soft-spoken. She’d only recently acted with the great Edwin Forrest, and yet she’d said she could have acted with Edwin Booth forever. They read each other’s minds. It was a dance.
Edwin had been flattered by the implied besting of the man he was named for. He’d liked the way she allowed herself to be led. His usual leading lady was much older and much more experienced than he. These accomplished actresses hit their marks, achieved their moments. His job was to keep up.
Mary Devlin was unspoiled and charming. Yet an attempt on his part to nudge the relationship forward had been sweetly but cleanly rebuffed. She had genuine suitors and he’d had no serious intent. Quite the opposite. Never would he marry an actress!
Probably he wouldn’t marry at all. I will live and die an old maid, he thought experimentally, just to see how it felt. If Rosalie can do it, why not Edwin? They can slide into their dotage together.
Asia has stopped talking. Probably she made a persuasive case. Edwin goes to the door of his room. “Mother?” he says. “Mother?” he says, more loudly, though he knows she hates to be yelled for. When there is still no answer, either because she didn’t hear or is pretending she didn’t hear, he takes a lamp and goes downstairs. The kitchen smells of yeast and rising bread.
Mother and Rosalie are sitting at the table, planning out the next week’s meals. The doors to the oven are open. A few red embers glowing inside provide the only light. The sound of the storm heightens the sense of warmth, like a snug berth on a rocking ship. Edwin feels the same wave of anticipatory homesickness he used to feel as a boy whenever he left with Father.
“Mother,” Edwin says. “I need Father’s Iago costume. Also Richelieu.”
Mother looks at but not into his face. “I’m saving Father’s costumes for John,” she says. She goes back to her shopping list, apparently feeling this needs no explanation or apology.
Edwin has seen Mother over the past weeks altering the pants, the tunics, the robes. Father was a small but bulky man. Edwin is very slight. He’d assumed those alterations were for him. He’d told his manager as much. Uncle Ben has been cobbling bits and pieces together for him, sewing with great galloping stitches while Edwin rehearses. These makeshift make-do’s are nothing compared to Father’s jeweled and fur-trimmed elaborations. Who knows when John will play Iago? If ever. Edwin will play him next week. And also the week after that. Edwin is the one Father chose to carry his legacy. He feels the ghost of Father’s hand as it landed on his shoulder, dubbing him heir apparent.
“I see,” Edwin says. Heat has flooded into his face and neck.
He holds the lamp away so as not to show that.