The girls got on their knees to look as we rambled by the pasture.
“Aren’t they pretty?” I said. “So light brown and big-eyed, they look like deer.”
“Guernsey,” said Reverend Griswold. “They’re called Guernsey cows. I understand that they give excellent milk.”
“Then those are the lucky cows,” said Mrs. Poe.
Vinnie looked up at her hopefully. “Like four-leaf clovers?”
Mrs. Poe choked back a cough. “No, they don’t bring you luck, it’s they who are the lucky ones. They are the kind of cows that won’t be eaten, at least not until they no longer give milk.”
A cow near the road stopped cropping to raise its doe eyes to us.
“Hello,” Mrs. Poe sang out. “We won’t eat you . . . yet.”
“We eat cows?” said Vinnie asked her.
I beckoned for Vinnie to come sit on my lap. “We are city people,” I explained to the others as I cradled her in my arms. “We haven’t thought much about how things get on our plates.”
Mrs. Poe plucked at the top of her glove. “You ought to. You ought to be aware that a creature gave up its life for you.”
“Virginia!” exclaimed Mrs. Clemm.
Mrs. Poe smiled sweetly. “I’m sorry, but they do die for you, try to ignore it all you want. We are all murderers.”
“You must stop this right now,” said Reverend Griswold. “Think of the children.”
Mrs. Poe peeled back her glove, revealing a large broken blister surrounded by angry flesh on the meat of her thumb—a bad burn. She saw me looking.
“Cooking accident,” she said.
Her mother drew in a shuddering breath.
Suddenly, Reverend Griswold called, “Slow down!”
Steadying himself against the rail of the wagonette, he shielded his eyes as if to search for something. “I know where we are. There! There’s the stream. And there—there’s the bridge!”
We looked at the stream winding its way through the fields and rocks before it disappeared under the bridge just ahead.
“This is it! There’s the marker for where Fiftieth Street will come through. We are at Kissing Bridge Number Two! Stop! Stop!”
Mr. Poe halted our horse upon the low stone bridge. Wincing, Mrs. Poe rolled her glove back over her wound.
“I was just reading about the famous kissing bridges of old New York,” said Reverend Griswold. “There are three of them in all, very
famous, very old. In days of yore, it was the custom for a gentleman to kiss the woman in his care when they came upon the bridge.”
Mrs. Poe raised her childlike face toward her husband. “Then you had better kiss me, Eddie.”
Mr. Poe turned in his seat. “What if a gentleman has more than one woman in his care?”
Fire crept into my face.
“You cannot kiss everyone!” sputtered Reverend Griswold.
Mr. Poe frowned slightly. “You would have me ignore my aunt?”
“Oh!” Reverend Griswold huffed. “Oh!”
Blinking rapidly as the Poe women stood up to receive their kisses, the reverend turned to me. “Madam?”
I put out my knuckles.
His lips were removed from my glove by the jerk of the cart setting off. I put my arm back around Vinnie, wondering again how I had come to be part of such a strange group.
We trundled down the road until at last, sparkling before us in the sun, churned the broad expanse of the East River. Stout steamboats plowed the dark waters, belching smoke into the bright blue sky. To the left was the southern tip of Blackwell’s Island, whose thick woods hid the penitentiary and lunatic asylum lurking within. Strange that Miss Fuller had seen Mr. Poe there. I wondered if he had finished his story about it.
“Pretty,” said Vinnie.
“It is a pretty view,” said Mrs. Poe. “Eddie, I would like a house here.”
“First I must make the money.”
“Greeley’s house is just down the way,” said Reverend Griswold. “Very big house, very big. He had me for lunch there one day.”
“You look in one piece just yet,” said Mr. Poe.
Reverend Griswold squinted in confusion as Mr. Poe tied the horse to a tree, then began to help down the ladies.
“Oh, I get it,” said Reverend Griswold. “Not terribly amusing.”
Mrs. Poe chose a spot under a maple tree and proceeded to empty the hamper I had brought. “I’m starved.”
Reverend Griswold dug into his basket and produced a bottle of wine. “Who’s thirsty? Poe, I bet you are.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Poe, unruffled, “but I’ve brought a flask of water.”
The wind nipped at skirts and hat strings as we ate a picnic of bread, cheese, and pickles, the flavors enhanced by the fresh river breeze. With no other takers for his bottle of wine, Reverend Griswold consumed it all. He then played Red Rover with the girls, Mr. Poe, and me with a ferociousness that ended the game early, and fell asleep under a bush in the middle of hide-and-seek.
My girls, sensing that he was off, left him alone. They centered their energy upon Mr. Poe as they would have done upon their father, if he had been there. Long after Mrs. Clemm retired to her knitting and Mrs. Poe to making a necklace with the violets that winked in the blowing grass, they insisted that he keep playing. Even Ellen chortled with delight when he staggered around pretending that he couldn’t find them.
At last he tagged Vinnie, crouching behind a rock on the bluff overlooking the river. “It.”
She popped up, laughing. “You better hide good or I’ll find you!”
She went to the rock we had designated as “home,” squeezed her eyes shut, and began counting aloud. I tiptoed off in the opposite direction of where I’d last hid. Feeling the frisson that comes with the thrill of potential discovery, even in a silly game, I climbed a hillock, then knelt behind a stand of poplars. I kept an eye on Vinnie—she was too close to the river for my comfort.
A touch on the shoulder startled me.
“Sorry.” Mr. Poe crouched next to me.
Joy surged through my veins. I quickly staunched it. “You have quite a way of appearing mysteriously.”
“Ninety-nine,” Vinnie counted in the distance, “one hundred! Ready or not, here I come.”
I watched Vinnie heading toward the rocks behind which I’d just hid. “She’s going in the wrong direction. I should stop her before she gets too far.”
“Her sister is over there. She’ll do it.”
“It seems, Mr. Poe, that another of your talents is knowing where everyone is.”
He smiled, disarming me with maddening effectiveness.
“You were kind to invite Reverend Griswold today,” I said. “He seems to be the lonely sort, in spite of the many friends he claims to have.”
“He makes his own luck.”
“Well, he’s certainly feeling no pain now.” I glanced toward where the reverend was laying under the bush.
Mr. Poe laid a finger on the back of my gloved hand. My sights trailed to it.
His voice was rich with emotion. “I want you to know that you have changed me.”
The force of his gaze made me look into his eyes.
“I have not had a drink since I have met you.”
He did not remove his touch. All my senses converged upon that single spot. “Your wife told me that.”
“She tells you much.”
“Yes. She does.”
“Yet there is so much you don’t know.” He slid his fingers around mine then, gently, pressed. The sensation seeped down to my roots.
I watched Vinnie search through the cascading limbs of a weeping willow.
He held on to my hand. “What troubles you? It goes further than our rift the other night.”
I sighed as I looked into his eyes, urgent with emotion. “It’s not a rift we have had,” I said softly, “but a break. A final and clean break. I think your wife suspects us.”
He kept his hold, gazing intently into my soul.
“This is wrong,” I murmured.
“Yet you know that it’s right, Frances. We
must
be together. We have to be. I know that you feel this way, too.”
“How?” I sighed deeply. “I don’t see how we are to manage it.”
“I am considering a solution.” His gaze went to Blackwell’s Island. He was drawing in a breath as if to speak when a silvery voice arose.
“Eddie?”
He slipped his fingers from mine.
Mrs. Poe was trudging up the hill, holding up her skirts. “Eddie? What are you doing?”
“Hiding, obviously,” said Mr. Poe. We stood up.
She looked at us, coughing into her gloved fist. “I thought you were going to take Mrs. Osgood on a boat ride.”
“You really don’t need to,” I said. “It was a silly bet.”
“He needs to. He should do what he said he was going to do. Take her out, Eddie.”
“No,” Mr. Poe said flatly.
Vinnie came running up. “There you are!” She hit Mr. Poe’s arm. “It!”
“Indeed, I am.”
“Go hide, Eddie,” said Mrs. Poe.
Vinnie bent over, panting. “Mr. Poe, can we go out in the boat now?”
He did not look at his wife, who was frowning at him with those dark-rimmed eyes so like his own. “You must ask your mother.”
“Please, Mamma?” Vinnie begged. “We can all go! Please. Please?”
By then, Ellen had joined us. It was her beseeching look—from she who asked so little of me—that tipped the scales.
“I suppose there can be no harm in it if we stay in the cove. Mrs. Poe, will you be coming, too?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t miss it.”
We walked down to the water slowly to accommodate Mrs. Poe, with the girls traipsing in front of us. Mrs. Clemm joined us along the way. Mrs. Poe then rested on a rock with her mother until the girls and Mr. Poe had righted the boat and dragged it to the water. We climbed in and took our seats: Mr. Poe in the back of the boat, Mrs. Clemm, Mrs. Poe, and I squeezed on the middle bench, and the girls in the bow.
The rhythmic splash of the oars and the sun on my back did much to soothe me in spite of the strange company. The girls dragged their hands in the water, chatting between themselves, as I admired the stately trees and ancient rambling houses that stood guard on the magnificent cliffs of the bay. With a pang, I thought how even then, men with pickaxes were digging their way toward the shore. They would not stop until the trees and mansions and cliffs were gone.
“Oh!” Mrs. Poe exclaimed. “My hat flew off.”
“Oh dear!” cried Mrs. Clemm.
I saw where Ellen pointed to the rapidly flowing water. Mrs. Poe’s straw hat scudded along the surface next to me, its trajectory slowing as it absorbed water.
“Get it, Mamma!” Vinnie cried.
Mr. Poe reached with an oar, and fishing carefully, hooked the hat. He brought it, dripping, toward me.
I leaned out to retrieve it. Just then the boat began to rock violently in the wake of a passing steamship. I pulled back, teetering. I had almost regained my balance when what felt like a push to my hip toppled over me. I pitched into the river.
Dirty frigid water whooshed in my ears and drove daggers up my nose. I fought against the murky cold, my dress tangling around my legs like tentacles, dragging me down. I felt the pressure of someone diving in next to me as I thrashed toward the cloudy brown light. My head broke the surface.
Through the water streaming down my face I could see Mrs. Poe holding out an oar. I strained for it with all my might.
A hard blow struck my skull. Blue light burst in my head. My ears roared as I sank down, down, down.
Hands pushed me upward. The watery bubble split over my head as I broke the membrane between water and air.
An arm gripped me around my ribs. I blinked away water to see Mr. Poe, hauling me to the boat. He grabbed the rim and tipped my chin above water. “Breathe! Breathe!”
I clawed the side of the boat and, finding purchase, looked up wildly.
Mrs. Poe gazed down serenely. “You really must be careful, Frances. You’ll catch your death in that water.”
• • •
“How are you feeling now?” asked Eliza.
I drew the quilt around my shoulders and wriggled my toes against the hot water bottle that she’d ordered from the kitchen the moment she saw Mr. Poe carrying me into the house. Efficient nurse that she was, she had me stripped, swaddled, and tucked in bed in a thrice, with a bowl of broth steaming on the nightstand. Still, I was shivering what must have been an hour later. My hair was yet damp.
Eliza stood over me with another quilt. “How awful to fall into the river. It stinks so of fish.”
“I can still smell it.”
“Well”—she snapped the blanket over me—“let’s just pray that’s the worst of it. If you were unlucky enough to fall into the river, at least you were lucky in that Mr. Poe is an excellent swimmer.”
Downstairs, I could hear the girls playing with the Bartlett children. Thank God I had fallen in and not them. With a chill, I could still see Mr. Poe hastily rowing us to shore and then our party jamming haphazardly into the wagonnette. Mr. Poe would not speak but flashed anguished looks over his shoulder as he urged our galloping animal ever faster. As Reverend Griswold clutched me to his chest, his wine-infused breath flooding over me as the vehicle bounced over the rutted roads, it was the worried affection in Mr. Poe’s eyes that had kept me calm. I had clung to it as Mrs. Poe watched us, coughing incessantly, with the curiosity of a child.
Now I voiced a thought that had been troubling me since the accident.
“I’m not sure that I fell.”
Eliza laughed. “You came home very wet for not falling.”
“Eliza, I’m serious.”
She looked up from tucking the quilt around my feet.
“I have this terrible feeling that I was pushed.”
“Pushed?” She sat down on the wooden chair by my bed. “By who?”
“Mrs. Poe.”
“Mrs. Poe? Little Mrs. Poe? She couldn’t hurt a flea.”
I shook my head. “I had the distinct sensation of being shoved often. I’d leaned over to get her hat.”
“Could it have been one of your girls, trying to see over you? Children sometimes have no sense.”
“They were sitting in the front of the boat.” I paused, replaying the incident in my head. “At least, I think they were still sitting up there.”
“Maybe Mrs. Poe was trying to catch you
from falling,
and that is what you felt.”
I sighed. “That’s possible. We were rocking in the wake of a steamboat. Maybe I am imagining the push. It’s possible that I fell overboard on my own. It all happened so quickly.”