Father remains a barrier to this. To see a play may be completely respectable. But to act in one remains suspect, actresses in particular merely a rank or two above prostitutes. Once Father’s genius was enough to overcome society’s disdain. But now his mad freaks are more famous than his brilliant performances.
Other children, on the streets and in the schoolyards, ask about him: Did he once climb a tree naked and crow from the branches like a rooster? Had he tried to raise a pony from the dead? A child? Did he keep a murderer’s skull in his trunk and bring it out whenever he played Hamlet? Had he, as Richard III, refused to die at the end of the play, forcing the scene to go on and on until the audience gave up and went home? Had he shot a man in the face? Jumped from a boat? Held a funeral for a pigeon? Were other actors afraid to take the stage with him? Did he not believe in God?
Some of these stories are true, some are not. All are news to the younger set. Their father’s genius is the fixed point around which the family revolves. It seems impossible that people who don’t even know Father would know more about him than his own children. They deny it all, and they believe their own denials, turning to each other for support in this belief. They are cut by the gossip nevertheless.
They hold their Mitchell cousins in particular contempt. During the summers, back on the farm, they exclude the Mitchells from every game they play, filling the numbers when needed with any Hall child who might be about. If no one else thinks being a Booth is an important distinction, then they’ll insist on it themselves.
Edwin
i
Now it’s 1846, another March coming round. On this particular day, the weather has been shifting rapidly from snow to rain and back again. A layer of white covers North Exeter Street and then is washed away. Four crows sit on the thin, barely budding branches of the mulberry. Their shoulders are hunched. Occasionally one or another opens and closes its beak. Edwin imagines the small, unhappy sound he’s too far away to hear. He’s at the window, watching the street in the faint hope that something interesting will happen outside. Certainly, nothing interesting is happening inside.
Edwin is twelve now, Asia ten, and Johnny will soon be eight. Like every adolescent everywhere, Edwin’s turning moody and aggrieved, but he’s so quiet compared to Asia and Johnny that this has gone largely unnoticed.
Tomorrow Father comes home, all boredom banished for a familial mélange of nerves and excitement. The house wakes up when Father is in it, the threads that connect the family tightening like violin strings until they buzz. Everyone, perhaps even Father, gets busy pretending that they follow his rules in his absence, as if there is a routine of cooking and cleaning and chores and school, and he merely drops into it.
He’ll spend the next two weeks here at home, completing a run at the Baltimore Museum, where he’ll be, on different evenings, Othello, Hamlet, Richard III, Kotzebue’s Stranger, and Edward Mortimer in The Iron Chest. Mortimer first. Edwin’s read the play and it’s easy to imagine how well his father will inhabit that angry, haunted, guilty man. Edwin imagines himself in the part of the young orphan Wilford and has already memorized a handful of dramatic speeches.
This house is no house for me. Fly I will, I am resolved:—but whither? His threats strike terror into me; and were I to reach the pole, I doubt whether I should elude his grasp.
What’s harder to imagine is playing Wilford opposite his father’s Mortimer. He’s watched for years as his father prepares for a part. Early on the day The Iron Chest opens, Father will start his transformation. Over breakfast, his posture will change, his gestures, his intonations. How deep does the transformation go? For the course of a day and an evening, is Father truly in love with a woman who is not Mother? Does he even have children?
Would Edwin be pretending to be Wilford, the fatherless orphan, while Father actually was Mortimer, the childless murderer? Is that what real acting is, that moment you stop pretending? And if so, can a person ever be sure, even offstage, even in the parlor of his own house, that he isn’t simply acting a part? All the world’s a stage and etc., etc. You don’t have to be the son of a Shakespearean actor to have such thoughts. Everyone has them.
The curtains by Edwin’s face are lace, white spiderwebs all the way from Nottingham, a source of much pride for Mother. They smell of dust. Edwin leans forward, breathes on the window, clouding the glass in front of his face. He puts one hand on the cold pane and draws its outline with the other. He erases it, sees the street beyond unobstructed again.
The O’Laughlen house across the street is shuttered; it looks tired and sad. Perhaps the O’Laughlens are away for the day. Johnny would know. William O’Laughlen is Johnny’s close friend. Kate O’Laughlen is Asia’s enemy; it’s not clear to Edwin which of the two started the feud, but they are equally interested in maintaining it. Michael O’Laughlen is about Joe’s age, but the two don’t play together. Instead, Michael tags along after William. He’ll do anything for Johnny’s attention. He’s a grimy little boy with messy hair and smudged clothes. I’d like to give him a good scrubbing, Mother says, but Edwin sees no point. It wouldn’t last to sunset.
A carriage pulled by matching black horses passes, their necks arched, their steps high and careful on the slippery ground. The crows flutter down to peck through the pile one leaves behind.
He wonders if Father might finally let him see the play. Museum theaters are all about gentility. No alcohol is sold. No one who might make a lady uncomfortable can get a ticket. The fare is chosen for its uplifting content. The pit is called the parquet and the audience is made to understand that throwing things at the stage will not be tolerated. Surely he is old enough—he’ll soon be thirteen!—to see his father act in such respectable plays in such respectable surroundings. It’s a museum as well as a playhouse. Every schoolchild in Baltimore has been to see the fossilized mastodon jaw, the diorama of menacing jungle cats.
“Edwin!” His mother’s voice is irritated. “You really must learn to listen. It’s annoying to say something three times without an answer.”
When he first took his place by the window, he was alone in the parlor. Now, without him noticing, the family has joined him. Rosalie is on the green settee with her sewing basket, tightening the buttons on one of Father’s shirts. Little Joe sits on her feet, leaning back against her skirt, his thumb in his mouth. Asia has gotten the dominoes from the bookshelf and is trying to talk Johnny into a game. A game of anything with Asia has only two possible outcomes. She will win and crow. She will lose and rage. Mother is standing on the rug by the large stone fireplace, trying to poke the fire awake. “Someday someone will say something really important to you, something you really need to hear,” she tells Edwin.
“Don’t step in that hole,” Johnny suggests.
“Look out below!” says Asia.
“That gun is loaded.”
They’re laughing at him. He can’t decide how much he minds.
“Why are you drawing birds on the window?” Joe asks. He points. The pane has fogged again and the outline of Edwin’s hand returned.
“It’s not a bird.” Edwin wipes it away, pulls the lace between himself and his family. It’s a mere gesture towards privacy. The lace is too open to conceal him.