There is a long silence in which Asia stares at Edwin balefully. Father was in such a good mood; they were having such fun, and then Edwin had to go and ruin everything. “？‘A man must rule his family in his own way,’？” Father says.
But what about Edwin’s meteor and caul? What about the more than 240,000 meteors falling over the East Coast and all the way to the Rocky Mountains at his birth? Will no one here speak up for the stars?
More silence. Father pulls his bread apart with his hands and puts a corner of it into his mouth. His teeth have been paining him for some time now. He shifts the bread about, seeking a place where he can chew comfortably. Edwin takes a small, grim satisfaction in seeing this. “June acts,” Father says finally, swallowing. “But June is no actor.”
The conversation is over. The decision is made.
In fact, it’s been a long time since anyone remembered Edwin’s stars. They’ve been superseded by Johnny’s fiery arm. Even though Edwin’s stars were seen all over the city while Mother was the only witness to Johnny’s magical fire. Edwin’s stars were in the paper!
At my nativity
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes.
And why does Johnny get to be an avenger while Edwin has to see ghosts? Why does June get to be an actor while Edwin has to be a cabinetmaker? It’s the unfairness that Edwin objects to.
iv
After dinner, Father leaves to call on his friend John Hill Hewitt. Hewitt is one of Baltimore’s brawling poets, and once punched Edgar Allan Poe （another of Father’s friends—he knows everyone!） in the face in a dispute over a literary prize. Father’s supposed to be back home for supper or, failing that, before the children go to bed, but no one is surprised when he isn’t. If Father has money and friends （the friends optional—strangers will do in a pinch）， he finds his way to the closest bar.
Mother waits for him until supper is cold. Then, claiming a headache, she goes to lie down. Rosalie follows. The other children serve themselves and eat in silence. Joe begins to cry and can’t explain why. Nobody tells the children to go to bed and so they don’t, except for Joe, who falls asleep in the parlor and is carried upstairs, his legs spilling from Edwin’s arms and bumping against the banister and doorframe.
Sometime after midnight, they hear Father stumbling up the stoop and hurry to their bedrooms before they’re seen. They leave a telltale fire crackling in the parlor.
Father is trying to be quiet. They hear this. They hear the wind, whistling through a crack in the bedroom window. They hear doors opening and closing. They hear Rosalie making her thumping way upstairs. The boys’ bedroom is icy and Edwin leaves his socks on when he gets under the covers. He shivers and his teeth rattle until he’s finally warm enough to fall asleep.
* * *
—
In the morning, Rosalie makes the children breakfast and sees them off to school. Her eyes are red from crying, but she refuses to admit this, claiming instead to be coming down with a cold. Father has already left. Mother doesn’t come out of her bedroom. A hushed gloom settles like a fog on the house.
The recent rain smeared mud and puddles of pig shit on the pavement. Edwin has barely left the stoop before he steps in something vile. He tries to scrape his shoe clean on the bricks, using some language he is not supposed to use, and the whole thing—his fouled shoes, his foul mouth—makes Johnny and Asia laugh.
They walk three abreast. “Mother is quarreling with Father,” Asia says, as if she’s the only one to notice. They assume this has to do with money. Father has spent his money somewhere and now Mother doesn’t know how to pay the bills. They’ve all seen this play before.
The O’Laughlens are half a block up the street. “Wilkes!” they cry and he dashes ahead to walk with them. Edwin’s friend John Sleeper appears. He says hello to Edwin and nothing at all to Asia, but he reaches over, takes her books from her. Sleeper is a tall, awkward boy with a messy head of curls. They walk a few blocks and then Sleeper hands her books back, as Asia’s school is to the right and the boys’ to the left.
School is school and everything there seems quite ordinary and all as it should be. The fact that Edwin smells like pig shit is remarked on. Perhaps as recompense, Miss Hyde asks him to read aloud “The Wreck of the Hesperus.” She finds his performance surprisingly lethargic, notes the shadows under his eyes, and sends him back home.
As he turns onto North Exeter, he sees a woman ascending the steps of his house. The brim of her black silk bonnet is so old-fashionedly large, it entirely hides her profile. He watches her knock. No one comes. He slows his footsteps rather than encounter this woman at his own front door. She’s leaning across the railing now, looking through the window into the parlor, which is very nosy of her and something he thinks she shouldn’t be doing.
Harriet Struthoff is standing in the doorway of her next-door grocery, her hair falling from its pins, burlap apron over her shirtwaist. She calls his name as he passes. “Why aren’t you at school, young master?”
“Miss Hyde sent me home, because I wasn’t feeling well.”
“You’ll find the house empty,” Miss Struthoff says. “Your mother took Rose and Joe to the farm this morning. She told me to tell you all not to worry. Everything is fine. But will you be all right on your own?”
“Are they coming back?” Edwin asks.
Harriet’s older sister is calling for her. “Of course,” Miss Struthoff says. The calling is more insistent. “Only I don’t know when. Now, you come right over here if you need any little thing. Milk or bread or something sweet.” She disappears down the steps into the store.
All this time, the other woman, the woman in the black bonnet, has been walking towards him. “You’re Junius Booth’s boy?” she asks.
Edwin admits to it.
He’s never seen this woman before. She’s old, but not elderly. Under the shadow of her bonnet brim, deep lines frame her mouth and cross her forehead. The bit of hair the bonnet doesn’t cover is the color of rusty iron. Her accent is almost British, but with something mixed in. Edwin practices reproducing her accent in his head. He’s good at mimicry. “Are you from England?” Edwin asks the woman. “I went to England once.”
The woman responds with a sharp inhale of air. “When was this then?”
“I was a baby,” Edwin says. The woman stares at him in a way that makes him nervous, so he goes on to say something he wouldn’t have offered ordinarily. “My brother Henry died there.”
“I hear you have a lot of brothers,” the woman tells him, as if Henry was someone he could easily spare. She is still pinning him with those gimlet eyes. “I was hoping to speak to your mother.”
Edwin makes it past her and up the steps. “She’s gone to the farm.” It’s a relief to shut the door.
He forgets about the woman. Being alone in his house is so unusual he’s not sure it’s ever happened before. He walks from room to room, seeing how it feels to be alone in each of them, and sure enough, it feels different in the kitchen than it does in his parents’ bedroom, different in the parlor than it does upstairs. He has a sense not so much of being alone as of being invisible, an intruder in his own body. As if, when no one is watching, he ceases to be.