The End of Innocence (4 page)

Another waiter came by, and Wils took his fourth flute of champagne. It had become stuffy in the room and the liquid, so cool on his throat, felt even better when belted back quickly. He was tired and his shoulders ached. Terribly tired, in fact.

His hand brushed a silk purse as he put down his glass. The purse tumbled to the floor and spilled open. As he reached to pick up the contents, he sniffed. The paper smelled of lilac. He stared slightly groggily at the page and then turned it over.

Fall Comes in Shades of Red

by Helen Windship Brooks

Fall comes in shades of red

And leaves in shrouds of white

But crisp, silver snow

can't consecrate fields

Burned while God slept at night.

Night rests in shades of gray

To hide the sun's sacrist,

And gravel grayed beasties

from shadows emerge

Turn dreams to dust, mem'ry to mist.

Mist comes in all its despair

And won't lift until

It chills fair maids who longed for love

in rubble abed.

Their voices silent, still.

He put it down and sat back, a dark look on his face. He didn't like it. Not one whit. Did this Miss Brooks think she was Emily Dickinson? He tugged at his starched collar
. I mean, this mist chills us all, dear girl, not just fair maids who longed for love. What about all of those dead men?

After a few moments he reread it. Perhaps it was the champagne talking, but the part about the chill and the rubble didn't seem so bad on second glance. But the gray clearly represented Germany, his homeland. He shook his head and tossed the paper onto the table by the silk purse.

What presumption. It must be some pinch-nosed, brown-draped, Boston spinster writing this patriotic nonsense. Give them something to be self-righteous about and off they'd go, putting their pens to paper and telling everyone how infallible Americans were.

He wished the whole unpleasantness in Europe were over. Max's death was already such a shock and the anger against Germany was palpable. He gave an involuntary shiver. Support the British and you're a hero; support the Germans and you might as well hang.

He looked through the crowd, tired and bleary-eyed. It wasn't as if things were better in Germany. If he went home now, he, a poet, would probably have to be part of the army, helping the Germans fend off the Russians. He'd just read about the battle going on in the morning's papers near Tannenberg, and it seemed the Germans were doing just fine without him. Such a mess.

And so he put his head down on the table, wishing once again to be back in his room in Beck Hall. But even better, to close his eyes and be done with all of them.

In what seemed to Wils to be an instant, he felt a tug on his shoulder. He opened his eyes. There was no music anymore, just the dull clink of dessert plates being stacked on trays by kitchen boys. He turned to see a young woman in white pulling at his arm.

“The dance is over?” He blinked, his eyes blurred. It was the pretty girl who'd been dancing with Riley. What did she want?

“Sir, do you know what happened to my purse?”

He looked at the tiny purse, which had wicked the dripping condensation from four champagne glasses into its silk. It was a soggy mess. Her poem was also damp.

“My purse, sir.”

Trying to pull his thoughts together, he vaguely recalled a poem. Brooks, it was. “Are you Helen Brooks?” he asked. She didn't look like a pinch-nosed spinster.

“Yes.”

“Are you related to Peter Brooks?”

“He's my brother,” she said, looking perplexed at the wet silk. “Did you see what happened?”

Wils's mouth felt like cotton. He needed some fresh air and wished she'd leave. “Oh, sorry about your purse. I put it over there to be out of the way. Won't it dry?”

“Silk spots.”

“Oh. Terribly sorry.” He blinked again, reaching for her poem. “Couldn't your mother have kept it for you while you danced?”

Her eyebrows arched. “My mother is too busy to hold my purse.”

“Oh,” he said, still groggy. “This fell out too,” he said, picking up her poem. “I'm Wilhelm von Lützow Brandl, a friend of your brother's. I row on his crew team.”

“You're Wilhelm? I've heard of you. Your father is a famous poet, right?”

“He was. Yes.”

“You read my poem? Did you like it?” Her eyes softened.

“When your purse fell open, it caught my eye. Sorry about the ink,” he said, handing it to her. “I must have placed it too close to one of these glasses. Do you have another copy?”

“No.”

“Well, it's still fairly legible. I do like poetry and, even though our countries would disagree about the war, you made a decent start of it,” he said, trying to cheer her up.

“But you thought this poem good?”

Had he said it was good? He hoped not. “It has its moments,” was the best he could think to say. He winced as her ears reddened. “Really, Miss Brooks, it's a good start. But death is a hard subject to do well. My professor says that death brings out the bad poet in us all. Perhaps you should have started with the moon over the water or some such.”

“The bad poet in us all?” She squared her shoulders. “I am not a bad poet.”

“That's not what I said.”

“What Germans say and what they do are quite different these days, I've found.”

There was no hope of rational discussion with this young woman. He berated himself for even opening his mouth.

“Good evening,” she said, abruptly turning on her heel, and heading toward an older, stocky man who was motioning to her that he was leaving.

As she walked away, Wils felt a childish urge to flick some water on her matching silk skirt. How ridiculous this young lady was, insulting him and his country because of a comment on her poetry! How many times had he been told to use others' poetry as a model—to reduce excess verbiage, or to consider a more subtle approach, and to avoid death in poetry completely? You didn't see him become rude.

He stood up and stalked outside. Good thing Harvard didn't admit such cynical women. They were intolerable enough at a dance—their own territory.

Wils picked up his pace along the gravel path to the gazebo, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He stood in the vast yard and looked up at the clear sky. The moon was large and bright, each star brilliant. It was hard to fathom that soldiers now abed in rubble halfway across the world saw the same sky.

Wils walked slowly down the rest of the path to the river, where he found Peter Brooks alone in the gazebo, his tall, spare frame resting uncomfortably against one of the wrought iron supports. He stood in shirtsleeves, smoking an Egyptian cigarette. Its scent mixed with the fragrant blossoms of a white alder bush.

Wils greeted him amusedly, “I met your sister, Peter. I don't think she's that fond of Germans.” The wooden swing creaked loudly as he sat down on it.

“But the British are a different story apparently,” said Peter in a brisk tone. “Her friend Ann said she danced exclusively with Riley tonight.” He skipped a small rock in the river. “Wils, your cousin is irresponsible, a philanderer, and, as far as I can tell, completely incapable of being serious about anything except rowing.”

“Come now, Peter. That's unfair even by my standards. Riley was just dancing. No harm in that.”

“I'm sure that's what Lily thought. And Isobel and Grace too.”

“I'll give you Lily and Isobel, but Grace, and Rose, and, well, Edith and Lucia—” Wils broke off awkwardly. “Those weren't entirely Riley's doing.”

“Is he still engaged to Edith?”

“No,” Wils said quickly. He frowned. Was that right? “Actually, I'm not sure, come to think of it.”

Peter looked at him intently. “Keep an eye on your cousin for me, Wils. Spencer needs to stay away from Helen.”

“You're not her father, Peter.”

“And she's not your sister,” Peter said drily. He flicked his cigarette into the water, picked up his jacket, and walked away along the gravel path.

Wils shrugged as he heard the steps recede. Perhaps if he had a sister who danced with Riley he'd be angry too.

He sat back in the swing and pushed his hands through his hair. A dull ache from the champagne he'd drunk had returned. And still all of his cares were with him. He'd irrigated his troubles, but not washed them away.

The water lapped at the banks of the river, a soft swish and murmur. There was a distant splash—perhaps a mink or a muskrat—and the evening cry of a few migrating birds.

It was so different here
, he thought.
So wild
. The world beyond the gazebo, across the river, was untamed. It hadn't been manicured into submission for four centuries like his lawn in Prussia.

Perhaps this was what the earth looked like when it was new. Trees, and rocks, water, the leaves. Before Arnold Archer, before Riley Spencer, before Max, before war.

Wils looked out into the depths of the wood.

It was the America the German poet Goethe wrote about—reclaimed from the wilderness by honest toil. A community bound together by the demands of the frontier. Yoked to work but free of tyrants. Free of the burden of history. Without the blood of the past draining in every walled city's gutter. The blood his own kaiser shed in Belgium. Napoleon before that. Cromwell. The Romanovs, Habsburgs, Tudors, Angevins, Guelphs, Ghibellines, Visigoths, Bosnians, Serbians, and countless others.

He smiled, thinking of how much fun he'd had as an eight-year-old, when he'd run through the trees with his dog, Perg, under a ceiling of yellow leaves—a child playing with a simple, rich abandon through the shortening afternoon hours. Before the misery of adult life dawned on him. Before childhood friends and acquaintances like Max started disappearing into the night.

He stopped the swing.

Mein Gott,
why did you let Max die
?

His heart sank as he looked into the sky. The stars were so clear. And so uncaring.

Lexington, Massachusetts

Sunday, August 30, 1914

The maze of paths leading to Merrimack Hill from other fields was now abandoned and private, covered in years of pine straw and flanked by brambles, disappearing in the ever-thickening forest gathering around the Brooks family home. Piles of stone littered the property in odd lines, fossils of old stone fences now unrecognizable to the yeomen farmers who had once worked the land. The great fields of Lexington, once cleared for farming, now sprang with sugar maple and aspen, catalpa, ironwood, and oak. Buckthorn gathered around stone walls, its roots and branches toppling the rock in places, making it difficult to pass.

The fields were much older than the house on Merrimack Hill, which had been built well after the last shot of the Revolution, and the last of the age of gentleman farming in the 1800s. Helen's grandfather had built it to be in the middle of nature and a good distance from his neighbors, who, at that time, had been overcome by the craze of Thoreau's famous experiment in simple living at Walden Pond.

Helen's grandfather was one of the few who resisted a simple life, maintaining that if one really wanted to understand life, plenty of people had written books on the subject and those books could be read by one's well-tended and elaborately carved hearth. As the family's shipping interests provided more income than they could ever spend, Jonathan Brooks Sr. built a large house in which to raise his only child, Jonathan Edwards Brooks Jr., outside of the clutches of Beacon Hill in Boston. For added security, should Boston society wish to invade his privacy in Lexington, he purchased two additional estates, in Maine and New Hampshire, to which they could escape.

By the dawn of the twentieth century, the Brooks estate sat on five acres at the southern edge of the Merrimack River Valley. The house had been built a half mile from the same road on which the Colonial militia escorted the British back to Boston and, as was the wont of Brooks men, it was traditional: a redbrick Federal with two floors and a basement, two central chimneys, and white-painted windows outlined by black shutters. Gas lanterns lit the bright red front door, and by the wide slate steps at the front visitors found an iron boot wipe bolted into a moss-covered stone.

The interior of the house, given the disposition of its inhabitants, was slightly less bucolic. Some maintained that a house divided against itself could not stand, but the new Mr. and Mrs. Brooks found just the opposite to be true. Over the decades of their marriage they found that the more divided their house, the more secure the peace.

And thus, in the first room off the main hallway, the parlor, Helen's mother, a Windship from Boston, established her territory. Before Merriam had married Jonathan, the Brooks family had stuffed its statues and paintings, chairs, and books in the room. The day after the wedding, Merriam donated the overage of books to the Boston Public Library, an act which, according to friends, had sent her fragile father-in-law to an early grave. He was not against charity, but giving his books away was equivalent of letting all of his blood.

Her parlor was then transformed into a room decidedly different from the rest of the house. It was distinctly feminine, with stuffed floral chairs and white walls set with borders of silver silk damask. White tasseled lamps lit the ceilings and alcoves where various carved owls and ancient goddesses sat looking stately. On one wall hung a large sepia portrait of Merriam Brooks as Athena, and on another, a picture of Seneca Falls.

Mailing supplies overflowed the room's central table, including boxes of
Family
Limitation
, the dreaded sixteen-page tract (illustrated) on how not to have children. This was the pamphlet that had caused so much trouble. Carved into the mantel were the words of Saint Paul, “Love Bears All Things.” Each Brooks family member was convinced it spoke of his or her own martyrdom.

This had been a silent room over the summer. In March, Mrs. Brooks had left for an extended visit with Margaret Sanger, a nurse she had met at the 1912 Industrial Workers of the World strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts. But ever since her return in early August, Merriam had rarely been around. She now spent her time in the winding corridors of the Boston tenements or with her lawyers. Initially, the state and federal authorities had sought to compromise on her repeated violations of the decency laws by mailing
Family
Limitation
to local women. But City Hall had been particularly stubborn. Unfortunately for Mrs. Brooks, it was an election year for several city bosses who ran on morality and decency platforms.

Helen viewed these activities in an entirely different light from her neighbors, but one even more damning. Her mother's cause was ostensibly to provide better health care for the families of the women and children of Boston's slums, but Helen had noticed over the past few years that if her mother's hands were idle, she'd find a new problem to solve that would remove her further from her own family at Merrimack Hill. Two years ago it was workers' rights. This year she worked for family limitation and equal voting rights, both of which, Mrs. Brooks felt, would contribute to better health for women. Next year, it would be something else.

Helen, who was not a worker, not poor, and was in good health, knew she was of little interest to her mother. Her father had raised her. The two of them spent most of their time in the library, as far removed from the atmosphere of the parlor as was possible.

The library was a very different sort of room: leather-covered chairs; books carefully cataloged by author and subject; wine-red walls hung with family portraits (of relatives other than themselves); and a bust of Edmund Burke in a dark alcove. On the mantel of the redbrick fireplace sat models of three clipper ships. A large bank of windows overlooked the east garden full of Russian blue sage, lavender hydrangeas, and four trellises of climbing wild roses. Her father, Helen felt, had been right to refuse the red velvet curtains her mother had installed when he'd gone on a fishing trip to Maine. But perhaps he'd been hasty when he'd called the Boston Animal Hospital to haul them away to use as bedding for orphaned dogs.

It was in this library on an early Sunday morning that Helen sat across from her father, fidgeting in her chair. Her shirtwaist's high lace collar prickled her throat. She shifted, pulling her feet under her long white skirt as she tried again to concentrate on her reading.

Mr. Brooks, across from her, lay back in his chair dozing off, his chin on his chest and his newspaper draped over his stomach. He was still in his dressing gown and slippers. His hair, once dark, was now peppered with gray. He was stouter and grumpier these days. And that morning so was she after the disastrous party the night before, finding it impossible to think of anything that would make her happy, despite the promise of a handsome young man coming to move her things that afternoon.

The grandfather clock in the corner chimed the half hour in a low, sonorous tone. Helen looked up from the manuscript she was reviewing. It was on the history of clipper ships and she'd promised her father she would read it before she left that afternoon for college. A breeze from the windows fluttered his paper and rustled the flowers outside. He twitched in his chair, and his breathing became more stubborn, lapsing into a series of occasional snores.

Helen glared at her spotted purse beside the green banker's lamp on the reading table, recalling the remarks of the young German. In her mind she could see him lifting his eyes, his vision blurred by excessive drink.

Her
poem
was
quite
good
, she grumbled to herself.

She looked out the window to the bright day, hoping to go back to better thoughts. Perhaps she'd write a poem about a man asleep at a dance who wakes to find himself…trampled. She smiled at the prospect.

“I didn't know that I was writing a comedy.”

She had not realized her father was awake. “Not a comedy, Father.”

“A tragedy?” her father asked.

“Of sorts,” she said.

“What is the subject of this most recent drama? The great clipper race I allude to on page thirty-five?”

“Father, I admit I was thinking about something other than this draft.”

“Impossible.”

She thought she caught a smile and gave one back. “I've a question about that poem I wrote last week. I was quite proud of it. Did you think it too emotional?”

“I don't recall,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

“Because a young man at the dance last night told me to avoid death in poetry completely until I could do it better.”

His eyebrows shot up. “He said that?”

“Yes.”

“Well, without trying how does this ruffian think one is expected to learn?”

“My point exactly.”

“Helen, his comment makes little sense. He sounds daft.”

“I agree,” she echoed.

“Not, Helen, that one can't learn wisdom without experimentation. We don't start from scratch. I'd never suggest that. It would be an insult to Edmund Burke. I'd never insult his memory.”

“I never thought you would,” she said, settling back into her chair.

Her father roused himself and stretched. “Let me see your poem again,” he said with a yawn. She went over to her purse and brought it to him, watching closely as he looked at the paper.

“This appears smudged.”

“He put it beside his
four
glasses of champagne. Or whiskey. Or some type of alcohol.”

“He sounds intemperate to me.”

“He's German.”

“He is? Well, that explains it. Germans are an intemperate sort. You know, Visigoths and all. Nietzsche, Feuerbach, and Marx returned them to their hopeless roots,” he said softly. He sighed and his voice trailed off as he read through her work again. “Yes, yes, yes. Helen, I think this is a good start, and very fine in many places, but in all candor I have seen you write better. The torched fields are a little strong.” He shook his head. “And the part about the women is self-pitying.”

Helen was taken aback. This was what the German had implied. “But, Father, men start wars, they die, and women are sad.”

“Well,” he said, then halted and cleared his throat. “You mustn't tell your mother I feel this way because she'd take it as an attack on her sex and not as a matter of my opinion about a poem. In my experience, women have a way of helping a government send men off to war to die once the men, as you say, start the war. But you might consider that war is often forced upon men who don't wish to go at all. Men are inherently peace-loving animals. And then women say they'll never forget; how glorious it all is—and then men have a way of dying brutally and the women then do forget, which ranks only slightly less problematic than when women don't forget and cause the next generation to wish to avenge their deaths.”

Helen looked intently at him. “Father, perhaps Mother would take what you said as an attack on our sex because it seems to be an attack on our sex and not a criticism of my poem. My maid feels sad and it's not because she's guilt-ridden about sending men off to war.”

“Dear child, men have been beaten about the head and shoulders by women's feelings for generations, not to mention eons. You have been exceptional in that you're more like a son to me than I'd expect any daughter to be. The mist chills us all, Helen. Not just women. Maybe your German drunk has a point.”

“But it's all right to be sad when you are the victim of things beyond your control. These are not shrill Prussian mothers thrusting their sons into Belgium.”

She saw his lower lip curl.

“You think he has a point.”

“A bit of one,” he said.

“You think my poem is the most silly chuff you've read?” Her face reddened.

“That's not what I said.” He looked pained. “Perhaps the young man's point could have been made in a politer manner, but at college you'll have to listen for the merits of the argument and not the way in which it's been presented. Sometimes we learn from those we disagree with.”

Helen sighed. “I will think on it,” she said, returning to her chair, and to a tedious discussion of sail rigging on the clipper ship
Flying
Cloud
. Only twenty-three pages left. She put a large
X
over a perfectly decent paragraph and in the margin spitefully urged him to rewrite it for clarity.

Ten minutes passed before she heard the Sunday paper rustle again. Her father peered from the other side of the editorial section.

“You know, Helen, I received a note yesterday, which I'd meant to give you.” He stood up and walked over to his desk, picked up a bright white envelope, and brought it to her.

“What's this?” she asked.

Her father began to fill his pipe, not looking at her.

Harvard University

Dear Jonathan,

It was good to see you last week at the Harvard Historical Society meeting. I had no idea you had been working on a new manuscript about the clipper ship.

I was also intrigued to learn that your daughter was editing it and that she is enrolled at Radcliffe College.

I have an extra seat in my
Editing
for
Editors
class that I would like to offer her. Boys who usually fill my class have gone to seek their glory in the European war.

Have your daughter come to my seminar starting this Monday. Harvard and Radcliffe do not have the same calendar, and my other classes have already started, but this one doesn't start until Monday, and given her work for you, I've made an exception. I hear she's a good writer.

To be clear, this is a senior-level course, meets on Mondays and Tuesdays, and demands a copious amount of creative writing. She needs to be prepared to work.