Vows

  "Oh, Mother…" Dropping to her knees, Emily fell across her mother's bed with tears streaming from her eyes. Josephine was not a woman often disposed to tears. Had she been, perhaps she could have made her husband happier. Dry-eyed, she studied the ceiling while touching the head of her weeping daughter.

  "And what about you?" she inquired. "Are you ready to tell me about you and Charles … and this Mr. Jeffcoat?"

  Startled, Emily's head shot up, her tearful eyes wide.

  "You know?"

  "Your father told me."

  "He did?"

  "Of course he did. What do you think we do up here in this room every evening? He tells me about his day, and you are a very important part of all his days."

  Josephine's last disclosure had effectively stopped Emily's tears. Running a knuckle beneath each eye she said, "Papa was very upset when he found Tom and me kissing, wasn't he?"

  "Yes. But now you should be able to understand why. He was—is—very concerned about you, just as I am. We love Charles very much. But I don't believe either one of us wants you to make the same mistake we did."

  Crestfallen, Emily doubled forward and rested her cheek against the back of Josephine's hand. "Oh, Mother, what should I do?"

  Josephine took her time answering, weighing her words. "I can't tell you, and I wouldn't presume to, not anymore. You're a very impulsive young woman, Emily. You close doors with the same vehemence with which you open them, just as you did to your father and Fannie. It's still closed—you see?" She turned to glance at the bedroom door. "The only advice I can give is to open the door—open all your doors. It's the only way you can see where you're going."

  "Are you saying I shouldn't marry Charles?"

  "Not at all. You seem to be the one who's questioning it."

  Leaning across her mother's bed, Emily admitted it was true: she was questioning it, had been since her feelings for Tom had surfaced.

  Tom.

  Charles.

  So great a decision to make in so little time.

  Realizing the girl would have to make that decision for herself, Josie sent her on her way to do it. "And now I'm very tired, dear. I think I'd like to rest a while." She sighed and let her eyes close. "Please tell Fannie to wake me when your father comes home for dinner so I can eat with them."

  * * *

  Chapter 15

  «^»

  Tiptoeing from her mother's room, Emily left the door open behind her. She stood in the hall staring at the wallpaper for several minutes. Fannie and Papa … since before he'd married Mother? How young had they been? Not much older than she was now. And Mother, resisting Papa's advances much as she, Emily, often resisted Charles's? The admission seemed too incredible to reconstruct. Yet Mother had intimated that carnal urgings should not be disregarded in making a decision about whom to marry.

  Dazed, Emily navigated herself to her own room and dropped anchor on the foot of the bed. So many parallels, too many to ignore. She stared at the window ledge behind the lace curtains, imagining a love powerful enough to withstand more than twenty-two years, unrequited; a respect immense enough to withstand the same twenty-two years under a mantle of silent misgivings. How difficult for both Mother and Father. Yet they had persevered, given their children a foundation as secure as any religion or creed, for in all her life Emily had never suspected a rift in their devotion to one another.

  And Fannie, the lorn one, how empty her life must have been. Beneath her veneer of gaiety, how much heartbreak must be hidden.

  Charles would be like Fannie—lorn and empty and heartbroken—should Emily reverse her decision to marry him. But he would not remain cordial through the years as Fannie had with Mother and Father. He would be hurt and angry and would make it impossible for all three of them, herself and Tom and Charles, to live in a town this small without future bitterness.

  The afternoon aged; blue shadows stained the snow-covered window ledge. Downstairs the oven door squeaked as Fannie opened and closed it. Emily checked the time: 4:30. In less than twenty-one hours she was scheduled to stand beside Mother's bed and join her life to Charles's. Irreversibly.

  Could she do it?

  More to the point, could she not do it?

  She tried to imagine herself, when Charles came tonight, telling him, I've made a mistake, Charles, it's Tom I love, Tom I want to marry.

  She crossed her arms and doubled forward, experiencing a real stab of pain. She had let them go on too long, her daunted feelings about Charles. How could she, at this eleventh hour, make such a decision?

  Five o'clock came—full dark now, near winter solstice; five-thirty and Mother woke up across the hall; quarter to six and Papa came home, stamping his boots, washing his hands, asking where everybody was. Frankie banged in, fresh from sliding with Earl and the boys. The smell of roasting chicken drifted upstairs.

  Emily rose and smoothed her skirt, moving about her dark bedroom, delaying the inevitable. She could not avoid them forever. In the hall a faint light drifted up from below. She stood at the top of the stairs gathering courage to take the first step. All the way downstairs she imagined facing Papa and Fannie to find them changed somehow, now that they had been redeemed by Mother's words. But when she entered the kitchen she found them looking the same as ever—Papa in his work clothes with underwear showing at the neck and wrists, reading the weekly newspaper, and Fannie in a long apron with her pale peach hair slightly ascatter, working at the stove. They looked much like any ordinary husband and wife, and Frankie—setting silverware on the table—might well have been their son. With a start, Emily realized it could have been true. Frankie might have been their son and she their daughter. The thought brought Emily a sharp feeling of inconstancy on Mother's behalf, yet Josephine was probably right: Fannie and Papa would someday be husband and wife.

  Sensing that he was being studied, Edwin lowered the paper just as Fannie turned, and the two of them caught Emily watching them from the doorway. The room held the same sense of imminence that had predominated since she had discovered them in it kissing.

  "Well." Edwin snapped his newspaper flat. "How is your mother? I was just heading up."

  "She's better." Emily answered in the kindest tone she'd used with him since that discovery.

  "Good…good." Silence reeled itself out, uncomfortably lengthy. Finally Edwin spoke again. "I took the liberty of inviting Charles to supper tonight. I thought it might be appropriate since you won't be having a wedding dinner with us tomorrow."

  "Oh … fine."

  Edwin glanced at Fannie while gauging the reason for Emily's sudden docility. "Fannie's made roast chicken—your favorite."

  "Yes, I … thank you, Fannie. But Mother asked me to tell you she'd like the three of you to eat together in her room."

  "If she's feeling strong enough," Edwin suggested, "maybe I could carry her down and we could all eat together just this once."

  Frankie had been staring at all three of them and piped up, "What's the matter with you, anyway? You're standing there gawkin' like a bunch of hoot-owls!"

  His observation at last jarred the tension. Emily moved into the room, ordering her brother, "Get the glasses and napkins on for Fannie while I help her mash potatoes."

  What a meal, what an evening, what a phantasmal set of circumstances. Charles arrived, jovial and excited. Edwin carried his wife downstairs. Fannie served them all a delectable dinner and they ate as if nothing were amiss. But the tension within Emily felt as if it would cut off her air supply.

  She tried—oh how she tried—to find within herself the wherewithal to deal honestly with Charles. But he was so happy, so eager, so amorous when they stepped onto the porch to say goodnight.

  He kissed her roundly, caressed her as if holding himself on a precipice.

  "Tomorrow night at this time," he whispered ardently, "you'll be my wife." He kissed her again and shuddered deeply, breaking the contact to speak throatily at her ear. "Oh, Emily, I love you so."

  She open
ed her lips and began unsteadily, "Charles … I…"

  But he kissed her again, interrupting her confession, and in the end she could not find the means to annihilate him.

  When he was gone, she roamed the confines of her room with desperation forming a great knot in her breast and dampening the palms of her hands. Knowing she would be unable to sleep, she went for solace to the animals at the stable, only to discover there another plea from Tom, this one tacked to the outer door where anyone might have found it—a white envelope bearing her name telling her clearly how desperate he was.

  She took it into the office and sat on the creaky, lopsided chair with her heart racing as she withdrew a rich, deeply embossed postcard bearing a swag of rose in shades of mauve and wine and pink, held aloft at the corners by bluebirds from whose beaks bows and ribbons fluttered. In the center of the card more roses and ribbons formed a beautiful floral heart, below which the verse was inscribed in stylized gilt letters pressed deeply into the cardboard:

  My hand is lonely for your clasping dear

  My ear is tired waiting for your call

  I need your help, your laugh to cheer:

  Heart, soul, and senses need you, one and all.

  Below the verse he had written, I love you, please marry me.

  Had Charles sent it, Emily would have been less shattered. But coming from a man like Tom—the one who had ceaselessly teased, aggravated, and called her tomboy—the impassioned plea pierced her heart like an arrow from Cupid's own bow.

  She pressed her lips to his signature, closed her eyes, and despaired loving him, needing him much as the verse on the card had sketched—with heart soul and senses. But the clock was ticking off the hours toward her wedding with another, and here she sat, fainthearted and frightened, with tears raining down her face.

  * * *

  There would be times in later life when Emily would study her husband across a lamplit room, feel a surge of love, and be freshly convinced that her mother's last act of mercy was to die that night.

  Papa came to break the news, in the predawn hours, sitting on the edge of Emily s bed, shaking her out of a brief and tardy sleep. "Emily, dear, wake up."

  "What? … mmm…"

  "Emily, dear…"

  She sat up with her head pounding from lack of sleep, her eyes gritty and swollen. "Papa? Is something wrong?"

  "I'm afraid so, Emily."

  He had brought a lantern. She peered through its glare and saw tear tracks gilding Papa's cheeks. She knew the truth even before he spoke the words.

  "It's your mother … she's gone."

  "No!"

  He nodded, sorrowfully.

  "Oh, Papa."

  "She's gone," he repeated quietly.

  "But she felt so good yesterday."

  "I know."

  "Oh, Papa," she cried again, rising on her knees on the bed to clasp and cling to him—her first touch since she had condemned him for loving another. She felt his body quake with in-held sobs, though he made not a sound. She spread her hands on his shoulders, inexplicably saddened because he had loved Mama after all. In his own fashion, he had loved her.

  "Papa," she whispered brokenly, "don't cry. She's an angel already I'm sure."

  He didn't cry. But when he straightened, Emily saw in his red-rimmed eyes an emotion far more difficult to bear than grief. She saw regret. Wordlessly he squeezed Emily's hands and rose from the bed, waiting while she got up, too, and moved ahead of him to the room across the hall.

  There, in the lanternlight, which was already losing intensity as the sun stole up, Fannie sat on the edge of Josephine's bed, tearless, gently smoothing the brittle white hair back from the pale, wrinkled brow of her dead cousin. Across the white sheets and pillowcases, across Josephine's white nightgown and skin and hair a splattered bloodflow had dried and darkened to a rufous brown.

  "Ohhh…" The mournful syllable escaped Emily as she drifted to the side of the bed opposite Fannie and, kneeling, pressed her hands to the mattress cautiously, as if the form lying upon it could yet be disturbed. "Mother…" she whispered as tears slipped quietly down her cheeks.

  Having lived with the certainty of her death lent little ease at its coming. It had reached in and snatched her from those who, unsuspecting, took yesterday's turnabout for a healthy sign. They mourned together: Fannie touching Josephine's hand; Emily kneeling opposite, rubbing her mother's sleeve; Edwin standing behind her. While they lamented, Fannie continued smoothing back Josephine's sparse white hair, murmuring, "Rest, dearling … rest."

  They thought of her in those first despairing moments, not as she was but as she had been, in haler times when her hair was black and her arms plump, her eyes avid and her limbs quick.

  "Were you with her, Papa?" Emily asked solemnly.

  "No. I found her when I woke up."

  "Didn't she cough?"

  "Yes, I seem to remember that she did. But I didn't quite wake up."

  Again they fell silent, groping to accept the fact that Josephine was truly dead and nothing any of them might have done could have prevented her death.

  "Papa, what about Frankie?"

  "Yes, we have to wake Frankie."

  But neither of them moved. Only Fannie, who knew what must be done to spare a boy only twelve years old. She fetched a basin of water and with a soft cloth tenderly swabbed the mouth and neck of Edwin's dead wife, his children's mother, then found a clean white sheet and spread it over the soiled bedding, hiding the dried brown stains. When the task was done, she straightened, studying Josephine lovingly. Fannie's own nightgown was wrinkled, her feet bare, and her disorderly hair defied all rules of gravity. But she exuded an undeniable air of decorum as she said quietly, "Now go get Frank, Edwin."

  Emily went with her father, carrying a lantern and clasping Edwin's hand. Beside Frankie's bed they paused, studying the sleeping boy, reluctant to awaken him with the dread news, bolstering each other during these brimming minutes of heavyheartedness.

  At last Edwin sat down and lined Frankie's pretty cheek with his big work-widened hand. "Son?" The word caught in his throat. Emily gripped her father's shoulder and reached beyond it to do her part.

  "Frankie?" she entreated softly. "Wake up, Frankie."

  When he did, blinking and rubbing his eyes, Emily took the burden from Edwin and said the words herself. "I'm afraid we have some sad news this morning."

  Frankie awakened with unusual suddenness, gazing at his father and sister clear-eyed as he rarely was on an ordinary morning. "Mother's dead, isn't she?"

  "Yes, son, she is," Edwin intoned.

  Frankie was young enough that he remained untrammeled by the stultifying rules of Victorian mourning. He spoke what he felt, without monitoring either the words or his honest reaction. "I'm glad. She didn't like coughing all the time am being so sick and skinny."

  He went with them, stood dutifully beside his mother's bed, gulping, staring then spinning from the room to do his crying in private. The others remained, exchanging uncertain glances, wishing they could run from duty, too. But there were people to inform, a body to be laid out, a wedding to be canceled a coffin to be built.

  The survivors of Josephine Walcott had no precedent to guide them through the hours that lay ahead. They stood momentarily vacuous, wondering what propriety demanded first.

  Edwin took the initiative.

  "I'll have to go feed the horses, and hang a sign on the livery door until we can get the black wreaths made. Emily, would you see to it that Frankie gets over to Earl's house when he's calmed down? Maybe Mrs. Rausch would let Earl stay home from school today to keep Frankie company. I'll stop by the schoolhouse and let Miss Shaney know, and I'll go by Charles's, too—that is, unless you'd prefer to tell him yourself, Emily."

  "No," she replied, already realizing who'd need her most. "I'll stay here with Fannie."

  "As for the laying out…" Edwin glanced somberly toward the corpse "Wait until I get back."

  But the moment he'd left, Fanni
e armed herself in a mantle of efficiency. Picking up the basin and heading briskly for the door, she countered. "A husband should be spared this cross. I'll see to it myself."

  As Fannie passed Emily, the younger woman reached out as if to touch her shoulder. But she withdrew the hand indecisively and called instead, "Fannie?"

  In the doorway, Fannie turned. Their eyes met and both women realized that the last time they had spoken Emily's heart had been filled with enmity. Her expression held none now, only a ravaged, remorseful gratefulness for Fannie's presence. When she spoke, her voice held a plea for forgiveness. "I'll help … it's the daughter's place to help."

  "She was your mother and this won't be pleasant. Wouldn't you rather remember her as she was?"

  "I will. I'll always remember her with dark hair and heavy arms, but I have to help, don't you see?"

  Tears brightened Fannie's eyes and her voice held both understanding and love, as she answered, "Yes, of course, dear. We'll do it together, as soon as Frankie is out of the house."

  When Fannie had gone downstairs Emily stood in Frankie's doorway, thrust against her will into a maternal role for which she felt unprepared. Her brother lay facing the wall, as if he'd been thrown onto his bed. She entered and sat behind him, rubbing his back and shoulders. He had calmed somewhat, though an occasional residual sob plucked his breath away.

  "Frankie?"

  No answer.

  "She's happier, just like you said."

  Again no answer for long minutes. Then, finally, through a plugged nose, "I know. But now I haven't got no mother."

  "You have Papa and me … and Fannie."

  "But none of you are my mother."

  "No, we're not. But we'll help however we can. Now Papa says he wants you to go to Earl's today and spend the day with him. You want me to walk you over there?" He was twelve years old, yet neither of them found the question silly today.