The day he comes down to breakfast is celebrated with constant fussing at him to eat more. He used to be so hale.
He spends his first day of returned health writing letters to various young women who have probably missed hearing from him. It takes the whole of the day and much of the night as he wants these to rhyme. June is amused by his agonies of composition until John wakes him for help with spelling and word choice. But in the light of morning, even that seems funny. All goes swimmingly for three whole days. And then John and Edwin have a terrible fight.
It starts at breakfast with everyone there to witness it. John’s chair has been pushed into a little puddle of sunshine as Mother wants him to put some color back in his cheeks. He blinks sleepily. Molly has begged the cook for a bread pudding with currants and the kitchen is filled with the familiar smell of scalded milk. They are all tucking in when Edwin mentions that he plans to vote for Lincoln’s reelection. He’s never voted in an election before. He’s proud of this remarkable display of civic responsibility.
John’s response is immediate. “You’ll see Lincoln crowned king and have only yourself to blame.”
Edwin started the fight. John escalates it.
“That baboon has no right to the presidency.” John is already shouting. He’s not well enough for such passions. Asia puts a hand on his shoulder and he slaps her off. “His pedigree, his coarse, low jokes, his vulgar similes . . .”
Edwin starts to respond and John raises his hand. He’s not done yet. He will not be interrupted. “And he’s a mere puppet of the North. Greater minds than his play on his overweening vanities. People who want to crush out slavery by any means—robbery, rapine, slaughter, and bought armies—makes no difference to them. People without honor and goodness.” It’s a speech. Clearly he’s given it before.
Rosalie rises and takes Molly and Edwina out of the room. They do not go silently. “No,” Molly says firmly, “I want to see,” but Rosalie has the sleeve of her dress gripped in her hand and is not stopping. “No!” says Molly.
Edwina echoes her. “No! No!”
“You’re distressing Mother,” June says to his brothers. He’s the oldest, but he’s been away so much. It’s Edwin’s house and he’s used to being the oldest, Rosalie clearly not counting. John is the only son here with no standing beyond the power of his conviction.
“I so love having you all visit,” Mother says, her voice trembling, her eyes red. Her gray hair hasn’t been done up yet this morning. She looks disheveled, an elderly waif. “We’ve had such a lovely time.”
That should have been enough to stop them, but Edwin and John don’t even seem to notice. They’ve risen from their chairs and stand, staring each other down. John is still holding his fork. He points to Edwin with it. The tines circle menacingly in his hand. “?‘Tis the time’s plague when madmen lead the blind,’?” he says.
“?‘The fool doth think he is wise,’?” Edwin answers.
Edwin’s never been a brawler. But John’s only barely able to use his right arm. Asia can’t guess how this will end. However it does, it won’t be good. She is a mother of three. Breaking up fights is practically her profession.
She moves into the space between her brothers, forcing them apart. There is a momentary tableau. She sees the stubble on Edwin’s chin, the shadows under John’s eyes. She smells the stale smell of sickness still on John’s breath. Then John drops his fork onto the table, where it hits his plate with a loud crack and bounces onto the floor. He leaves the room.
Asia wonders what just happened. Surely John would never have stabbed Edwin. Suddenly her intervention seems unnecessary and she wishes she hadn’t done it. It’s almost as if she doesn’t trust her brothers. Everyone sits back down and pretends to go on eating. No one speaks.
Whatever pretense of peace was achieved proves temporary. Later that morning, the quarrel starts again. Asia hears it, the voices, not the words, rising from the parlor. By the time she’s downstairs, Edwin has ordered John from the house. In an instant, John’s packing his bag. In an instant, he’s out the door.
June runs after him. Asia watches from the window. They’re three houses down, talking together, June’s arms in constant motion, John hunched stubbornly into himself.
The weather is changing, the air dry, but crackling with electricity. Asia feels her hair lifting, on her arms and neck. In the distance, lightning stretches in large white sheets. She can smell a storm coming. There’s a yowling right under the window, that strange unearthly call of a cat in heat. It feels all portentous to Asia, but of what she couldn’t say.
John walks away. June comes back to the house.
Asia meets June at the door. “He says,” June tells her, “that if it weren’t for Mother, he’d never set foot in Edwin’s house again. He says he’s going to leave the North entirely and live in Virginia. He says that he knows none of us agree with him, but he really can’t bear having his dearest principles denounced as treason inside his own family. He says every day here is a new stab in his heart.
“And he’s finished with anyone who takes Edwin’s side.”
Asia won’t take Edwin’s side. But she won’t side against him either. There must be a way she’s allowed to love them both.
* * *
—
John doesn’t go live in Virginia. Weeks pass. He and Edwin put a flimsy patch on their wounds. He continues to visit his mother, saying as little to Edwin as possible. Edwin tries to reach him with talk about acting, a subject on which Edwin can be encouraging, even admiring. “You’ll do great things,” Edwin tells him. “You’ve got the true grit.”
John’s not interested. “It’s not in my stars,” he says.
x
Edwin comes to play Philadelphia and he and Asia finally have the intimate, private conversation she’s been longing for. Edwin has met a woman here. A woman so sweet, he tells her, that he can only imagine Mary has sent her.
Perhaps he’s feeling guilty. Mary’s only been dead a year and a half. Asia’s the last woman to defend Mary, but really! Wasn’t that the world’s great love affair?
The new woman is Blanche Hanel. Her father is a wealthy shipping agent and a patron of the arts. She’s tall for a woman, about Edwin’s height, and blond, which is new for him. He asks Asia to call on her, which Asia does. Blanche has none of Mary’s disqualifications. She also has none of Mary’s sharpness of mind.
She makes up for being less smart by being more rich.