Mrs. Poe Read Free Page B

story, she made no verbal judgment, just said, “You’re staying with us.” Nor did she speak up when our other friends inquired about Samuel, but silently sat back and let me lie about his imminent return. She thus saved me from the pity that our circle would have rained upon me for being the abandoned wife of a ne’er-do-well. I would have gained their sympathy but lost my place and my pride.
    She took little Johnny from her maid. “Mary, please take Mrs. Osgood’s things downstairs to dry and Henry along with you. Henry: be good .” To me she exclaimed, “Goodness, you look frozen. Why didn’t you take a hackney home?”
    “What is this news?”
    She removed little Johnny’s hand from inside her blouse. “Mr. Poe is coming!”
    “Here?”
    She laughed. “No. Not unless he wishes to change a diaper. He’s going to appear at the home of a young woman named Anne Lynch—this Saturday! And we, my dear, are invited.”
    I found my excitement to meet the renowned writer was tempered by the fact that I had just been encouraged to be his competitor. “Wonderful! Do we know this Miss Lynch?”
    Eliza gave little Johnny to Vinnie, who’d been silently begging for him with open arms. “She’s new to this city from Providence—she’s afriend of Russell’s family. She stopped in his shop and told him she was attempting to start a salon—not just for the usual bon ton but for artists of all kinds, rich or poor. I daresay she might have a chance at success after having snagged Poe.”
    “I wonder how she lured him in.”
    “She might come to regret it. He’s sure to be horribly ruthless. Poe doesn’t like anything .”
    It was true. I had seen his reviews in The Evening Mirror . Prior to “The Raven,” he was best known in literary circles for his poisoned pen. For good reason he was called the Tomahawker, happy as he was to chop up his fellow writers. He regularly tore in to gentle, gentlemanly Mr. Longfellow with a savagery that made no sense. In truth, I had wondered about his sanity even before Mr. Morris’s accusation, or at least his motives for such abuse.
    “The gathering is to be at seven. Say that you’ll come with me. I told her about you—” She saw my wince. “That you are a poet.”
    Bless you, Eliza. “I’ll go, if the girls are well by then.”
    Vinnie jogged little Johnny on her hip. “I will be!”
    “There you have it,” I said with a nonchalance that I did not feel. If I became his competition, I, too, might soon be on the wrong side of the dangerous Mr. Poe.

Two
    I woke up the next morning shivering from the cold. Leaving the girls curled up together under the quilts in our bed, I went to the window and cleared a spot in the frost. Snow was coming down, muffling sidewalks and streets, blanketing rooftops, capping the ornate iron railings of the stoops across the way. The milkman passed in a sleigh, the mane of his horse thick with icy crystals, as was his own hat and shoulders.
    Wrapping my robe more closely around me, I went to the fireplace, uncovered the banked embers, and gave them a poke. One of Eliza’s Irish maids, the “second girl,” Martha, the cook’s and parlor maid’s helper, slipped into the room with a bucket of coal and a can of water, then whispered her apology when she saw me crouching there. As she took over tending to the fire, I wondered once more how I would have survived without the generosity of her employers and where I would go once my welcome wore out. There was no question of returning to my mother. She had never gotten over the disappointment of my marriage to Samuel. Father’s death the following year had further turned her against me; she blamed the blow of losing me for weakening his health. The doors to my sisters’ and brothers’ homes were equally closed, nor could I find shelter in the arms of another man, at least not a decent one, if I divorced Samuel for abandonment. No one wanted a divorcée as a wife. I did not even have the