The Eulogist Page 6

  “On Sunday,” added Erasmus as if this explained it.

  James crossed to the fire. It reflected in his eyes and, for a moment, turned them red. “Well then,” he said, clapping his hands and blowing on them as if overtaken with a chill. “Congratulations. Congratulations to you both.”

  “Jamie,” I said, staring at those wax-blackened hands. They were beautiful hands, their long fingers once intended for paging through books, not for manual labor. He stared at the mantelpiece that bore a pair of his most exquisite candles. With two quick bursts of air, he blew them out.

  * * *

  Other than her apparent ardor for Erasmus, it was not clear what had compelled Julia Morrissey to so abruptly and radically leave Ephraim Morrissey. It was generally agreed that only a nefarious situation would allow for a young lady to defy her father. As such, speculation was rife.

  They say he beat her. They say he used her as a wife.

  Still, said many, her duty was to her father.

  And then there was Erasmus and the fact of his unsuitability. Most agreed that if she had to marry a Givens, James was the more respectable, having at least a business with prospects and a sober demeanor, neither of which could be said for his younger brother.

  Yet Miss Julia Morrissey had married Erasmus, a man of words and poetry and grandiose claims of Paradise. Indeed, I could hear them reading aloud the Songs of Solomon. Solomon and the erotic breasts of love. Their heads would bend together, Erasmus would say something, and Julia would laugh about “hair like goats.” Had he truly been like Solomon, Erasmus might have compared Julia’s hair to a deep forest on a summer’s night flecked with stars and lightning bugs and the lust-filled smoke of campfires.

  Read me that part again about the lover’s breasts.

  “. . . thou art fair, my love; yea, pleasant: also our bed is green . . .”

  Those early days of love. The way she looked at him, I could not help but wonder how it would feel to be regarded so.

  Now winter was upon us, and we had taken refuge under quilts. I listened for the first bells of morning as I contemplated the acquisition of a sister. That I and not Erasmus would lie alongside Julia may seem unorthodox, but space was lacking, and so we had to double up. Nor should it suggest connubial interaction between the couple was negligible, for Julia was now with child. I shall not go into detail as to the arrangement, but suffice to say there was one, and those hours when James was at his workshop were the most fortuitous for Julia and Erasmus if inconvenient for me.

  So there was I beside the sleeping Julia. James would be gone to the workshop, and soon I would rise and break the ice in the basin. The day was coming to life with the usual crowing, bleating, clopping, and hollering. I could smell bacon frying in the cookhouse. Mrs. Humphries made griddle cakes most mornings, but sometimes she made fritters from a recipe taught to her by a man passing through to Michigan. Still sore about Erasmus’s reappearance, she would go on and on about how she had no use for these itinerants and why did he not settle down with a regular church, and what with his waking up the whole house on more than one occasion, croaking about redemption not to mention his nightly ranting brought on by recurring fever. Erasmus swore as soon as he was well, he would be on the road again in spite of his wife’s condition.

  In the meantime, Julia was either throwing up or wan with fatigue. James could barely look at her and never addressed her by name, but I saw how he fixed her candlewick and once brought her a case of Louisiana lemons to ease the sickness. Julia accepted these gifts with a smile that betrayed neither gratitude nor pity.

  I untwisted my chemise and fought for a piece of the blanket.

  “What is it?” Julia said as she rolled over onto her side. In the narrow bed, her rump pressed into me. I lay on my back, gazing at the ceiling. Julia’s nightcap had come loose during the night, and the ribbons were tangled in her hair.

  “Morning,” I said, stating it less as a greeting than a fact.

  Julia sat up. A ripe melon of a breast escaped from the front of her nightshirt. I tried not to stare. “I had the strangest dream,” she said with a shudder.

  I rose and fluffed the quilt, but didn’t ask. Perhaps it was to Julia’s better nature that Erasmus had appealed, but more than likely it was the promise of escape. That her father was stern was one thing; that he may have been a devil was another. Evil comes in many forms, as I since have learned. But the evil done to Julia by her father was never explicitly stated beyond rumors. Still, you could glean it from her manner whenever his name was mentioned, her refusal to set foot again in the First Presbyterian Church.

  The air in the room was darker than the sky. With icy hands, I lit a candle. Behind me, Julia rebraided her hair. That she had such abundant hair was the least of my envy. On those afternoons when Erasmus managed to have the room while James was at work, the amorous sounds coming from the bedroom disturbed me far more than the sounds of Erasmus’s delirium, and I burned with shame and desire.

  You are so kind, Olivia, Julia often said. But what else is one to do when one has a brother like Erasmus, whose excesses and impulsivity had driven us to distraction ever since he was a lad? You are a good Christian soul.

  You are a simpleton, I would say with a laugh, restraining myself from tucking a strand behind her ear.

  I withdrew my arms into my nightdress and began to tie up my undergarments beneath the muslin. I had not wanted to tell her that being Christian implied faith in all sorts of things, many of which I found preposterous. Most of the “Christians” I knew affected sufficient piety to parade a new hat in church.

  An extra room in the boardinghouse was bound to free up eventually. Until then, I would not complain. It was cold and drafty, and what was one more body if it kept me from freezing to death?

  I had no sooner pulled on my dress when I heard two raps on the adjoining wall. With an embarrassed look of pleasure, Julia pulled her chemise together and slipped out the door.

  * * *

  James started to miss dinners altogether, preferring instead to eat at his workshop or at one of the hotels or pubs. For his part, Erasmus was more and more in demand in the parlors of Cincinnati ever since the revival, preaching to ladies seduced by grace and forgiveness promised at such a low premium in so persistently gray a winter.

  Chillier still was the pall that lay between James and Erasmus like the slick, frozen mud. That Julia and I ate more often than not in each other’s company did not escape Mrs. Humphries, who compensated for her lack of an eye with an uncanny sense of the obvious.

  “So,” she said, sashaying by our table in the dining room, “he doesn’t want you standing beside him while he spouts his spilth?”

  Julia patted herself on her stomach. Were I Catholic, I might have likened her to Mary. “My husband is protecting me, Mrs. Humphries. When he speaks, there is often hysteria.”

  “Hysteria, is it? I hear what time he comes in. Preaching in Niggertown, I wouldn’t wonder.”

  Whether Erasmus had been completely forthcoming about his past to Julia was doubtful, but Humphries was eager to drive it home.

  “My brother is redeemed, Mrs. Humphries,” said I, affecting both indignation and piety. “Not only does he embrace the Lord, but he embraces the fallen.”

  Mrs. Humphries turned to Julia. “And clearly prefers to do his embracing away from the presence of his wife.”

  * * *

  In spite of Julia’s growing belly, Erasmus continued to come to her in the afternoon after my pupils had left, leaving me to fend for myself with few friends and little ardor for stitchery. One gusty day in late March, I could bear their proximity no longer. Donning my jacket, I stepped outside. A cold breeze insinuated its way up the street from the river, masking the pulse of melting water. A dormant lust lay like frost on the cobbles. It lay between Erasmus and Julia in the middle of the night as their breaths threaded together through the wall. It lay in James and in me.

  My breath came in puffs, and I warmed my hands
beneath my coat as I headed down the road. I wanted to escape as quickly as possible, leaving Erasmus and Julia their hour together, longing to step onto a steamboat to be ferried away.

  I had walked barely two blocks when I caught sight of James striding up the other side of the road. I wished I had worn a hat. And how many times had James scolded me for walking unaccompanied?

  “Jamie,” I yelled, but he didn’t seem to hear.

  Wrapping my cloak more tightly, I chased after him, but he had already pushed through the door of the boardinghouse. He was halfway up the stairs when I followed him into the hall.

  “Jamie?” I called up to him, panting. “Home so early?”

  He didn’t break his stride, but answered over his shoulder, “Wonderful news, Livvie. Wonderful. I’ve hurried home to share it.”

  “But, Jamie!”

  He had reached the upstairs hall, his hand already on the knob.

  I charged up after him, my cheeks reddening. As he drew the door open, James stiffened and started to withdraw, but not before I saw his shattered face. Seeing me, he straightened.

  “Come to the parlor,” I said. “Sit with me.”

  The clock in the parlor ticked as we waited it out. Somewhere in the house, I heard a groan or a creak. A dog barked, and the girl pushed through the front door with a basket of squash and beans.

  “Your news?” I said to Jamie. “Tell me.”

  He allowed himself a deflated smile. “Midas Barker,” he said, naming his biggest competitor in the candle business as well as his former boss, who had passed up Jamie for his nephew, “has had to fold his business. Word is, all his accounts shall come to me.”

  Chapter 9

  1829

  We awaited the coming of Julia’s baby by distracting ourselves with debates and lectures. That summer of 1829, culture and curiosity came over the city like the quickening of a maiden’s heart. Cincinnati was overrun by fanatics and intellectuals trying to make their case: Caldwell’s discourse on phrenology; Miss Fanny Wright on slavery and marriage; Dr. Alexander Campbell and Robert Owen battling the fundamental relationship between godliness and goodliness.

  The first I attended was that of Fanny Wright—the Scottish damsel who had arrived in our country to cajole and reform, draped in Grecian simplicity of such looseness and comfort that I found myself breathing more deeply just looking at her. Everyone was uncertain as to what to make of such a specimen. While we women were wired, corseted, bustled, and laced, her figure was unfettered in a slender cut of muslin—out-of-date, to be sure, but daring in its refusal to buttress the body. Charmingly she spoke from the lectern at the hall, linking such sensible notions as personal responsibility and the nobility of man. These were favorite topics of late, along with Virtue and Heroism and Man’s Agency in Redemption.

  We all knew of Fanny Wright’s views regarding slavery; indeed, many agreed, regarding the institution as distasteful to both the enslaver and the enslaved. But nods turned into expressions of bewilderment as Fanny Wright veered onto the topic of marriage. As a single woman, she could not be considered an authority, emancipated as she was from obligation.

  But this did not stop her from opining. Marriage, in Miss Fanny Wright’s view, was restrictive and demeaning. And not only that—it was cowardly. Why were men forced to resort to prostitutes, she asked of a stunned audience, except to satisfy a natural urge that was suppressed by enforced monogamy and endless childbirth? Marriage afflicts society as sorely as slavery, and since we must insist on procreating, then why not breed between the races, and thus alleviate the social ill of slavery and inequality once and for all?

  At which point, many people rose and left the room.

  “Fanny Wright buys up slaves like butter and sets them free,” Hatsepha whispered. “And this abomination she calls a ‘free love’ colony down in Tennessee? It completely fell flat. Mosquitoes weren’t the least of it.”

  Hatsepha nodded so vigorously in anticipation of my agreement that I refrained from telling her that Fanny Wright had struck a chord.

  * * *

  Four weeks later, we gathered again for debates, this time between Robert Owen, the Welsh reformer, and the arch-Christian Alexander Campbell. These arguments, so close in the wake of Fanny Wright, went on for days, this being the seventh and, mercifully, the last. Touted as an Examination of the “Social System” and All the Systems of Skepticism of Ancient and Modern Times, the debate boiled down to whether Christian belief was essential to a meaningful life. Campbell, a Christian, said yes. Owen, an atheist, said no.

  “Lady,” someone shouted. “Can you take off your hat?”

  “I may expire,” said Hatsepha, fanning herself with a pamphlet.

  Torpor had taken hold of Cincinnati, as much of the mind as of the humors. A violent downpour in the morning had flooded the streets, washing a stinky soup of garbage toward the river. By afternoon, the sun had reappeared to further cook the brew.

  Hatsepha Peckham’s headdress—a cornucopia of feathers and lace—was so ambitious that it seemed the very symbol for our small but burgeoning city.

  My attire, in contrast, was modest. A satin bow was all I could muster. I had come very close to being persuaded by Dr. Campbell. Indeed, I longed to be persuaded by his defense of Christianity. So much easier to subscribe to conventional thought and practice. But skepticism kept creeping back with the tenacity of a cockroach.

  You think too much, Livvie, James would say. You suffer from Opinion.

  People clustered in doorways and windows, and outside, too—all craning to hear the final to-and-fro and, with any luck, the final word. We were fortunate to get seats. “There’s James,” I said to Hatsepha, who was clinging to her hat lest the woman behind us wrestle it off.

  The room was cleaved by gender—the men on the left, the women on the right. Across the aisle, James nodded at Hatsepha and me. He was taking extra care to be cordial to Hatsepha, hoping to ingratiate himself to her father that he might supply all the candles for the Peckham coal mines.

  Hatsepha made a mewling sound.

  “Some people!” said the woman behind us.

  “Please, Hatsepha,” I said. “The hat.”

  She stared straight ahead while the mayor introduced the now notorious debaters. Owen, a man of small stature and rigid tidiness, wore a trim beard and spectacles. In contrast, Campbell looked like a deranged bison with a hoary beard extending past his chest. The argument was clearly Campbell’s to lose, for any concession to Owen would refute Cincinnati’s whole way of life, just as any concession to Fanny Wright’s views on marriage would have undermined civilization as we knew it.

  The audience leaned forward as Dr. Campbell took to the podium. Every time he evoked the afterlife, bonnets bobbed and men stroked their beards as if Dr. Campbell held forth on God’s Own Truth.

  Which, in fact, was Dr. Campbell’s very claim.

  When he finished his speech, the room exploded into applause, after which Robert Owen calmly took his place.

  “Robert Owen is an ideologue,” sniffed Hatsepha. “A charlatan. I can’t imagine what he will say.”

  As Owen commenced to speak, I caught a glimpse of Mr. Phinneaus Mumford, my erstwhile suitor and maker of maps, who had managed a seat toward the front of the room. I wondered if he understood even half of what was being said, particularly the nuances of Owen’s argument that virtue for virtue’s sake was sufficiently compelling without resorting to threats of hell.

  I could not help but agree with Owen that religion was divisive. The Methodists looked down their noses at the waterlogged Baptists; the Presbyterians scorned the Catholics; and no one put stock in the Quakers, who were, to a one, abolitionist.

  “Even the Pygmies,” Mr. Owen was saying, “have their own little gods.”

  “Pity he is such a good-looking man,” said Hatsepha. “I suppose he will go to hell.”

  As shall I, I thought, quite certain that hell could be no worse than seven days of debates.

 
“We are ethical beings innately,” said Robert Owen, “while God and religion only lead us to conflict. Dr. Campbell has misconstrued my words to equate marriage with prostitution . . .”—and I thought of Fanny Wright, whose point was exactly that—“and misses the argument altogether by ignoring my very premise that without the constricts and confines of the unnatural state of marriage, the very existence—nay, the very need—of prostitution will be rendered as unnecessary as a vestigial artifact.”

  Although in complete agreement, I shifted uncomfortably. One of my dimity pantalettes had loosened and was creeping down my leg.

  “Really,” said Hatsepha. “The man is mad.” She fanned herself excitedly and scanned the room. “And what of the resulting pregnancies? Speaking of, I don’t see your sister-in-law here. Nor your brother Erasmus. Are they interested in the topic?” Not waiting for my answer, she went on. “Seeing as your Erasmus is some sort of minister, I should hope so.” She lowered her voice and eyed my other brother. “As for James . . . ?”

  Before I could respond, Dr. Campbell started bellowing from the pulpit that Mr. Owen’s principles of Right Living in a Natural State were “unworthy, contemptible—nay, beneath contempt—for such principles could equally be applied to a goat!”

  Owen rose in indignation. “So you say, sir. So you say.” He jabbed his finger at Campbell. “But I dare you, Reverend, here and now before this audience, to prove the existence of God.”

  Proof that Jesus had died for our sins? A few in the audience gasped.

  Campbell, unwavering, brimming with scorn, seized the opportunity. Clutching the edge of the podium, he leaned toward us, his eyebrows practically on fire. “Let all those in the audience who have been swayed by Mr. Owen’s remarks that Jesus is unnecessary rise from their seats.”

  The next thing I knew, Hatsepha was clutching at my skirt, trying to pull me down. Heads craned. Murmurs rose to a din. I felt my pantalette release and drop to the floor. In the intervening chaos, two more people shuffled to their feet. I felt a thousand eyes on me. Viewing all of this from aloft, Campbell waited serenely, but in the end, only three of us were standing.