“Yes, sir,” I say, for Ma sits nearby.
I long to take a swig of the wine that’s making its way around the room—the smell of it burns across the air with an incendiary sweetness that tempts—but alcohol, even in small doses, affects me more than it does other people. I can’t bear the thought of falling into a stupor in front of the entire family, especially Rosanna, who’s just smiled in my direction, a light blush on her cheeks. Pa would chide me again. I’d collapse to the floor or spend the night in my room flopped across my bed, gripped in the throes of a ghastly headache, forgetting everything that happened after I drew the glass to my lips and tasted the first sip.
My God, I can’t even drink liquor like a man! I’ll never be able to earn a proper living like a man, stave off tears like a man, listen to music without succumbing to emotion like a man, please my family like a man . . .
The Galts depart after dark, but Aunt Nancy stays, for she’s resided with us as long as I’ve been a member of the Allan household. I disappear upstairs to my bedroom and clear my mind of the Galts, the Allans, and that muse up the hill by lighting a lamp and leaning back in my chaise longue with a volume of Horace’s poetry.
“Edgar,” says Pa.
I give a start and sit upright. I’ve left the door open a crack and see Pa tottering into my bedroom, his nose flushed with the ruddy shine of spirits. His lips look wet, and the whites of his eyes burn a liquid red.
I set my book aside, my heart thumping, my neck perspiring, despite winter’s cold breath beating at my windows.
Pa reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out a crumpled piece of paper.
“What is that?” I ask.
He staggers over to my desk and slams the paper down as though he’s killing a spider. He then proceeds to smooth out the page with a crinkling commotion until it resembles a flat sheet of parchment again.
I rise and discover it’s my “Tamerlane” manuscript, including the two new lines he instructed me not to write. Amid my ordeal with Lenore, I forgot about the rogue couplet.
Oh, God!
Pa rubs the back of his neck and sighs through his nostrils. “I forbade you to write down those two new lines, Edgar. Why did you disobey me?”
“The lines . . .” I clear my throat and attempt to deepen my voice. “They simply wanted me to write them down. That’s how poetry works, Pa. I can’t silence inspiration.”
He grimaces as though he’s just tasted a half-regurgitated piece of ham and brushes a hand through his hair. “My God, Edgar. Your chance to attend the university hinged on your ability to obey me, and you just ruined this opportunity—killed off your entire future—with two insipid lines of poetry. There’s no way—no way in hell—I’m sending you to Charlottesville now.”
I lift my chin and stare him in the eye, and before I can even think to hesitate, I open my mouth, and I finally say it—
“I know you’re spending time with another woman across town.”
Pa blanches. Once again, he runs his hand through his hair, his fingers now quivering. He seems to shrink five inches. “What . . . what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Elizabeth Wills, the pretty widow you visit. I also know you’ve fathered and financially supported more than one illegitimate child right here in Rich—”
Before I can finish that sentence, he’s on me, his hand around my throat.
“Ever since you turned fifteen,” he says, the fumes of wine and tobacco pummeling my nostrils, “you’ve been nothing but a sulky, ill-tempered burden who’s making your ma sicker than she already is. You’re making me sick.”
I dig my fingernails into his knuckles and struggle to pry his fingers off me, but his hand is so large, so clamped around my throat.
“I’ll send you away at the end of the week,” he says, spittle wetting my face, “not because I care a damn about your education anymore, but because I want you out of my house. Forget about poetry, and painting, and all your other nonsense. Study like a damn monk. Make yourself a useful, working member of society instead of a vagabond in the gutter. And after you graduate, I’m not giving you a single penny from my pockets, I don’t care how destitute you are. You’ll not receive one cent from me. Do you hear me?”
He’s squeezing my throat too much for me to speak, so I nod, and gasp, and fight to breathe.
He lets me go, but before he retreats, he twists his knife all the deeper into my heart by saying, “What a disappointment you are, Edgar. Such a disappointment!”
He leaves my room with a slam of the door that makes the lamplight shudder. I rub my throat and attempt to swallow, but the pain brings tears to my eyes.
Pa tromps downstairs, and I hear him shout at Ma and the servants. “Tamerlane” lies in a crumpled heap on my desk, but I don’t care. My head spins, and Pa’s still shouting at everyone because of me, even though he instigated every single battle in this war of ours when he first climbed into another woman’s bed—when he first called me an ingrate—when he ignored the agonizing bout of grief I suffered after Jane Stanard’s death.
Ma’s crying. Aunt Nancy’s pacing the upstairs landing. I throw open my back door to the upper portico and escape into the night.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lenore
My poet runs through the lamplit streets of Richmond.
He sprints across the snow in the near-darkness, his pulse surging, feet flying.
From my place of repose on an icy sarcophagus, surrounded by spirits who linger behind tombstones, too frightened by my presence to yet show their faces, I listen to Edgar Poe race through the city below me.
He listens to new lines of “Tamerlane,” which emerge in the cadence of his footfalls.
The wordly glory, which has shown
A demon-light around my throne,
Scorching my sear’d heart with a pain
Not Hell shall make me fear again.
I roll off the stone, untangle myself from the webbings of my blanket, and lunge for the city with the swiftness and agility of a lion.
CHAPTER NINE
Edgar
Up ahead sits the cottage of my friend Ebenezer—my boon companion who swam in the falls every summer with me and the other young miscreants of Richmond; who steered me up the James in his sailboat, guiding us on adventures through the wild river islands.
I tear across his lawn, spring into a tree, and climb up the white trunk to the snow-slick shingles of his roof. With a lift of the sash of his gabled window, I slide feetfirst into his room.
Ebenezer bolts upright in bed—not yet tucked beneath his blankets—not yet dressed in his nightclothes—but stretched out with a book atop his cotton bedcover.
“Aha!” He snaps the book shut. “I knew I’d see you here tonight.”
I close the window. “Why do you say that?”
“Bishop Moore’s sermon.”
I bend over to catch my breath, brushing snow off my pantaloons in the process, but I don’t yet answer.
Eb swings his long legs around until he’s sitting on the edge of the bed. His tawny hair sticks up like matted dog fur from the way he lay on his pillow.
“You looked like you might vomit up your breakfast after the bishop commanded us to silence our muses,” he says. “And I loathed what he said about your parents’ theater company. What an ass he was this morning.” Eb flinches at his own words and glances at his door. “Don’t tell Ma I said that.” He snickers. “Or God, for that matter. Forgive me, Lord.”