American Decameron Page 5

  After seeing his sister-in-law and his two nieces and one nephew, and after marveling aloud at how the little ones had grown and how the wife had aged not a single day since his last visit, Elijah accepted his brother’s invitation to take a leisurely stroll to talk frankly of the separate courses of their lives.

  “I’m happy to hear that Eakins could help you win commissions here,” said Randall. “If things go as you wish, will you be moving back to Philadelphia?”

  Elijah shrugged. He stopped at the street corner to pull a couple of pepsin tablets from a roll he kept in his pocket. The meal he had taken on the train trip from New York that morning was giving him dyspepsia, although Randall wondered privately if their meeting again after so long an absence had contributed to Elijah’s gastric discomfort. “I haven’t thought of just what I’ll do.”

  “Just like our sainted father. Never thinking more than a day or even an hour ahead. Life lived in the recklessness of the moment.”

  “The spontaneity of the moment, brother,” replied Elijah, parrying his brother’s jab with a smile.

  “Elise would like you to have dinner with us tonight, and I’d like you to stay with us while you’re in the city. There are workmen and repairmen coming and going throughout the day, which may be of some inconvenience to you, but at least you’ll sleep well before your meeting with Mr. Eakins on Friday. Elise convinced me of the need for a good bed in our new guest room, so you’ll be the first to lie upon this downy cloud and tell us how it feels.”

  It was late November. A crisp wind brushed past the two men. It carried with it the sounds and smells of a city at the zenith of its workday: the odor of hot asphalt from a street paving nearby, the clicking keys of typewriters within a second-story business school, the pungent smell of boiling turnips, the incongruity of “In the Good Old Summertime” cranked by an organ-grinder on a busy street corner. There was everything to take the two brothers’ minds from the central conflict between them that had yet to be remarked.

  “I’ve booked a room at the Windsor, Randy. I didn’t want to be a burden.”

  “You wouldn’t be a burden.”

  “I like the Windsor. And I also like not having to join the temperance league for the next three days.”

  Zing!

  “You will at least try to keep yourself sober before your meeting with Mr. Eakins?”

  “I have no intention of climbing upon the water wagon while I’m here, Randall. But perhaps it will comfort you to know that I intend, while in this city, to limit myself to only a couple of beers and a single pony of brandy a night. Will that help you to sleep better?”

  “I sleep quite soundly as it is, Elijah, because I know that your life is your own. It’s your choice whether to pursue the path of dissolution blazed by our father, or follow the more constructive and far more sober course that engenders success. You’re very talented, Elijah. I’ve always known this. I’ve been quite proud of you, though I’ve never really had the chance to say it until now. Here’s a golden opportunity to better your situation. Embrace it, I beseech you, with an unmuddled head.”

  “I’m not the man you knew three years ago, Randall. And I’m not our father.”

  Randall slapped his brother upon the back. “I’ll give you what I’ve rarely given you before: the benefit of the doubt. Now let’s select something sweet and cream-filled at the bakery around the corner, a contribution to the feast Elise is busily preparing for our return.”

  Three days later Elijah was introduced by his new friend Samuel Murray to the sculptor’s lifelong friend and teacher, Thomas Eakins. Elijah produced his portfolio, containing photographs of several of his most exemplary pieces. Eakins nodded and clicked his teeth ruminatively as he gave lambent consideration to the pictures in the book. And though he was momentarily taken with an art school sculpture that Elijah had created of a muscular Roman Centurion, Eakins being much more drawn to the male form than to the female, the celebrated Philadelphia artist was only moderately impressed overall and pronounced Elijah, a man who would soon be turning thirty-six, a “young artist of some promise.”

  “That would mean—mean what?” asked Elijah, who had been drinking and jumbled his words a little as he spoke.

  “It means that in time—”

  “In time?”

  “I do not wish to offend, but my assessment, Mr. Broddick, is that you have yet to reach the pinnacle of your talent. This is my opinion. My friend Sam here may think differently, but I am not inclined to recommend you or your work at the present time. And there it is.”

  Elijah allowed the anger that had been kept in the bud to blossom to full furious flower. “You arrogant son of a bitch!”

  “Sam, get him out of here.”

  “If you had talent yourself, sir,” railed Elijah, whiskey-scented droplets of saliva atomizing from his mouth, “you’d be working in Paris or in New York. You are here in Philadelphia, sir, because you are nothing more than a journeyman portraitist, a hack sculptor, a Muybridge pretender in the field of photographic experimentation.”

  Murray, his face an amalgam of shock and painful disappointment—not over the fact that Eakins had not agreed with his own more positive evaluation of Elijah’s work but at Elijah’s mortifyingly obstreperous behavior in the presence of a man whose reputation as one of America’s foremost artists was universally unassailable—took Elijah by the arm to lead him from Eakins’ atelier. But Elijah would not go easily, roughly disjoining himself from his escort and nearly striking him with wildly swinging fists—fists emboldened by the liquid courage that Elijah had found necessary for this encounter with artistic greatness. In short, the courage that Elijah had acquired in a South Philly groggery prior to his interview betrayed and disserved him, just as his brother had predicted.

  All in all, there was ample mortification to go around—mortification that was relayed in abject detail by the younger brother to the older later that day.

  “What difference did it make whether I’d been drinking or not? Eakins thought my work was shit!”

  The parlor door was quickly latched shut by Randall’s wife Elise to keep the three children from hearing words she did not wish them to hear coming from their spiritually vanquished, profligately profane uncle.

  “The difference, Elijah,” said Randall, who was pacing now, “is that had you been sober and of a composed disposition, you would have accepted Mr. Eakins’ comments with good grace, remembering that your friend Murray would gladly have remained your advocate and is not without his own influence in the art world. You have now slammed your door to both Mr. Eakins and Mr. Murray, and it is largely your love of demon rum—to put it in temperance terms—that has done you in. Change your ways, Elijah, I’m begging you. Or else you’ll end up in a premature coffin just like our ossified father.”

  “And you, my sainted brother, may go directly to hell!”

  With this final imprecation, Elijah fled from the house, nearly upending the man at the door who had come after a lengthy delay to repair the faulty furnace.

  That night Randall spoke with his commiserating wife beneath the sheets into the early hours. Both had headaches. Even their two daughters and their son had headaches. The harsh words, the paint and varnish fumes, the sound of perpetual hammering—it all seemed to be too much for the greatly beleaguered family. Yet Randall blamed his own headache and restlessness on his brother, who had shown up after a deliberate absence of two and a half years with the express purpose, Randall now sincerely believed, of depositing the shards of his own shattered life upon the doorstep of his brother, thence to stomp them in a paroxysm of alcohol-fueled failure into much smaller and more inconvenient pieces—not so easy now to be carted away, to allow for the sound sleep of the just and meritorious sibling.

  Randall took a sleeping powder.

  Elijah, however, did not sleep. He was more angry this night than ever he remembered in his life. He continued to drink. In a saloon, he punched the face of a man whom he had never before met
but who had cast a disdainful look in his direction. Elijah was punched back. He was ejected from the saloon, still thoroughly intoxicated, his lower lip bleeding, his mind reeling with thoughts of every grievous injustice that had ever been done to him. Why was his life such a struggle? Why was strong drink—the only thing that uplifted him, raised his spirits when the artist’s life left him so often professionally, personally, emotionally unmoored—why was this one thing, so efficacious, so invaluable in the short term, his worst enemy in the long run? He slipped into the icy bath of jealousy over all the good fortune that fate had bestowed upon his brother: a beautiful and devoted wife; three healthy, happy children; a job with a solid weekly paycheck; a new house, which, after the chinks had been filled and the pipes soldered and leaky roof patched, would be a home that any man should cherish with pride. There was nothing in Elijah’s life for which he could be proud. Even Eakins had pronounced him merely a man of some promise. And what if that promise was never to come to fruition?

  Here in this City of Brotherly Love, Elijah was now determined to go to his brother’s house and to pound upon the door until he woke Randall from his happy, carefree repose. He would spew hatred into the face of this greedy recipient of every ounce of fortune which by all rights should have been split evenly between the two siblings.

  And go he did.

  There was a bell and he rang it. He rang it over and over again. He hammered the door with his fist and kicked it. He stepped back and looked to see if a light had come on.

  No light.

  Were his brother and his brother’s wife waiting him out in the dark, hoping that his drunken rage would subside, that he would simply wander off and let them (and all of their neighbors) slip back into contented slumber?

  No, Elijah would not release his brother so easily. He would ring and pound and kick until Randall was forced to come to the door, even if the effort exhausted him.

  Like a madman let out upon the street, Elijah did this and more. He took a stone from the gutter and shattered the fanlight above the door into a shower of glass. The rudely awakened neighbors poked their heads out of their own windows and yelled for him to quiet himself.

  An officer quickly appeared. Seeing the hysterical man at the door and the broken glass for which the hysterical man was, no doubt, responsible, the officer stepped forward, squaring his shoulders to make his arrest.

  Elijah stopped. As he was about to turn, wholly prepared to defend the indefensible, the front door of his brother’s house opened. Randall appeared, pale, groggy, coughing heavily. “Gas. Leaking from the furnace,” he said, his voice rasping, desperate. “All through the house. Help me get Elise and the children out of the—” Randall’s eyes suddenly rolled back. Elijah caught his pajama-clad brother as he collapsed into Elijah’s arms.

  Elijah set Randall down away from the glass. He and the police officer dashed into the house and pulled the mother and her children from their beds. They put them out of the house as neighbors telephoned for an ambulance. The rescue was effected in a matter of two or three minutes. Had Elijah not persisted, bent upon waking the metaphorical dead in the house above, those who slept inside would have perished in actuality. The house had been filled with gas from the ill-repaired furnace in the basement. The windows were airtight; an expert glazier—a colleague of Randall’s—had installed them.

  The family was rushed to the hospital and all were eventually revived.

  Elijah was standing by his brother’s bed when the latter regained consciousness. Randall took Elijah’s hand and squeezed it in silent gratitude. When later the two were able to speak, Randall shook his head in wonder. “You saved our lives. To think that everything that was wrong and bad—your hard drinking, the anger and belligerence that grew from it—were at the root of our deliverance. Who would ever think that it should be your ulcerated jealousy of me which would, in the end, rouse me from my death slumber and restore me to my family and my family to me?”

  Elijah didn’t know what to say, except this: that love and hate can be partners in a random, nonsensical universe. And hate—not the everlasting variety but that which rises up in temporal fitfulness, only to recede in reparative repentance—can, on a rare occasion, do good as well.

  As for his enraged frenzy upon his brother’s doorstep, Elijah was never asked to apologize. He was, paradoxically, thanked ten-fold.

  1907

  PROBLEMATICALLY BETROTHED IN MASSACHUSETTS

  Ada and her husband Roland Wilmer had been up all night discussing what must be done. The private detective had made his report earlier that day. Now there was confirmation: their daughter Carrie had chosen badly. Their daughter had, in fact, chosen disastrously. Carrie’s fiancé, Scott Goodhue, had a secret, and now Mr. and Mrs. Wilmer knew what it was, though Carrie, they assured themselves, did not. Had it been otherwise, would she ever have agreed to the match?

  Granted, Scott came from Brahmin stock. The Goodhues were doing business on the bay before America was even a twinkle in the eyes of her patriotic patriarchs. The Goodhues were first whaling men, then exporters and importers. Their wealth agglomerated with each subsequent generation. Scott Goodhue himself was a successful businessman, the owner of a lucrative fish warehouse. But Scott Goodhue was something else as well. According to the report delivered to Mr. and Mrs. Wilmer, Goodhue was the father of a bastard daughter, born of an Irish maid. The Goodhue family had kept it quiet. Yet the fact of it got out through an anonymous letter addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Wilmer which began, “There is something of dire importance that you must know pertaining to your daughter’s betrothed, Mr. Goodhue.”

  Now that the detective had confirmed it, there was no question that Mr. and Mrs. Wilmer should tell Carrie what they had learned and ask her to break the engagement, even with the wedding set for Saturday—only four days away. Even though the scandal of canceling the wedding at the last minute would cast a cloud over the Wilmer family that would not evaporate for many years, far more grievous consequences were bound to result should Carrie be permitted to proceed with the wedding unawares, including but not limited to a humiliating, very public rotogravure divorce.

  In the bedroom the Wilmers shared in their large house outside the village of Newton Lower Falls, Ada Wilmer, her face bathed in milky lunar luminosity, agreed with her husband that their daughter should be told the very next day, and that Ada should be the one to do it. The opportunity would come during the two hours that mother and daughter had set aside to take an inventory of the wedding gifts.

  It was the first chance the two would have to spend some time together since Carrie’s gown-fitting. In the ensuing days, Carrie’s life as prospective bride had become a whirl of parties and teas and other congratulatory prenuptial soirees lavished upon her by the Newtonian social set.

  Ada watched the dining room clock as the minute hand crept past two. She folded and refolded a stack of embroidered napkins and a crisp linen tablecloth and a cambric washstand covering whose poor stitching could not be believed (although there was no mystery to it; it was bestowed by the foreman of her husband’s factory—a man whose wife was notoriously cheap).

  At a quarter past Carrie fluttered in, her head in a cumulus, her heart captured and held hostage by the man she believed she would soon marry. “Forgive the delay, Mother, dearest. Shall I dictate and you write, or will you have it the other way around?”

  “Sit, dear. There’s something I must discuss with you. It’s very important.”

  Ada indicated with a nod the empty chair beside hers. The dining room had become repository for the hundreds of wedding gifts that had been descending upon the Wilmer manse over the last several weeks: silver boxes and cloisonné, crystal vases, apostle spoons and cut glass cake dishes, andirons, a new, self-threading sewing machine, a china tea service, porcelain knick-knacks, a Maytag Pastime Washer, and a large sterling silver punch bowl that Ada wished she could use for the reception because the one the Wilmers owned was old and chipped.

  �
�You seem upset, Mother. Is the rector ill? Has Aunt Violet suffered a relapse?”

  Ada shook her head. “I’m simply going to say it, darling. And I want you to be brave.” Ada took her daughter’s hand and held it. “Scott has fathered a child. It goes without saying that it was born out of wedlock, since your fiancé has always been a bachelor.”

  “Oh,” said Carrie calmly. She removed her hand from her mother’s clasp and straightened herself in her chair. “I have no idea how you’ve come to know of this, but Scott’s told me already.”

  “He has?”

  “Moreover, Mother, I’ve forgiven him. He’s made amends. He has promised me that his profligate days are behind him.”

  Ada stood abruptly. She gripped the back of her own chair to steady herself. “I don’t mean to cast aspersions on the character of your fiancé, darling, but I can’t possibly think it an easy thing for a man who has exhibited such debauched behavior in the past to transform his character by simple proclamation.”

  “And that is where we are different, Mother. I take him at his word. He loves me and will not disappoint me.”

  Mrs. Wilmer put her hands upon her daughter’s head. Slowly she began to smooth the tresses with a gentle application of the fingertips. “Oh darling, darling daughter. We’ve done too good a job of sheltering you from the world. I should have been more honest with you about the ease with which some men fall victim to temptation.”

  “Scott is sorry for what he did, Mother. Very, very sorry. Do you not believe in forgiveness? In redemption? Or is it the idea of trust that you find so equivocal?”

  “Your father and I want only for you to be happy, darling. Both now and forever.”

  “My happiness—the only thing? Do be honest, Mother. Is it not also terribly important that no shame should come to our good family name?”