His father dismounts and swings him down. “There, boy,” Father says. “Your foot is on your native heath.” And the terror lifts and leaves him. The farm is his home and he will never be afraid there.
He feels a longing for it all—the way the water smells, branches scraping like violin bows in the wind, cows calling to be milked, fireflies sparking in the grass. Swimming and riding, climbing into the interlaced trees, singing with the slaves and the freemen in the warm evenings, taking the paths to the swamp with the dogs, ever hopeful for squirrels, panting and racing ahead.
No Mitchells lurking about, spoiling it all.
* * *
—
The Mitchells disappear into the squalor of the Baltimore Ring Factory. Edwin will not think of them again.
But after Edwin’s death, Baby Joe will take, as his second wife, Cora Mitchell, the daughter of one of the Mitchell cousins. The groom will be fifty-four and a doctor, the bride twenty-four and a socialite. The wedding will be a grand affair, with many newspapers taking note of the fact that the groom had two older brothers, the late Junius Booth Jr. and the late great actor Edwin Booth. No other brother will be mentioned.
ix
Richard III is finally opening in the hotel cellar. Johnny has passed on his chance to be Richmond. He’s lost all interest, won’t deign to attend, even though George Stout has told him that Edwin’s horse, bought for one dollar and seventy-five cents—a bony white mare unimpressed with her own stardom—may well be Edwin’s undoing. So far she’s foiled his every vision by refusing to move her feet. If this had been the horse Richard sold his kingdom for, he would’ve lost England anyway.
The afternoon progresses with Johnny roaming listlessly about his bedroom. His friends are all either watching Richard III or performing in it. He doesn’t exactly regret his decision. He’s just at a loss for what to do instead, when, from the first floor, he hears his father shout. He hears the thunder of footsteps on the stairs. Father arrives in the boys’ bedroom, holding the tatters of his Shylock costume. Edwin has cut the spangles from it to make himself a suit of armor.
Father’s first thought is to blame Johnny. He grabs Johnny by the arm, shakes him hard. He draws back his fist. Johnny is no telltale; it’s little Joe who serves up Edwin and he does this in a high, hysterical voice before Father’s fist can land. Now that Edwin’s been named, Johnny’s willing to confirm it. He’s in no mood to take a whipping on Edwin’s account. He tells his father exactly where the rest of his Shylock costume can be found.
Father arrives at the cellar just as the final act is unfolding. Edwin is savoring the climactic moments. “？‘Hark, I hear their drum. Fight, gentlemen of England! Fight, bold yeomen!’？” As he swings his sword, there’s a commotion at the back of the theater, which could be an enraptured audience, but isn’t. He sees his father coming, unconcerned with the hands and feet he may be stepping on. His face is splotched with rage.
Edwin drops his sword and dives for the cellar window. He makes it halfway through before his father seizes him by the legs. The window is at street level. The Negro who collected tickets for them at the play’s beginning sees Edwin emerging and takes hold of his arms to help him out. Edwin finds himself stretched between the two men, kicking his legs in an attempt to free them.
Over the years, as performed by the Booth family, Richard III seems to have had a variety of endings, none of them good for Richard. Father needs only Edwin’s bottom half in order to deliver a beating Edwin will long remember. It doesn’t give him the same strange thrill he gets from Miss Hyde’s cane.
x
Father pays Adelaide Booth the enormous sum of two thousand dollars and considers the matter at an end. Still Adelaide’s attacks continue. Since Father refuses to recognize Richard as his only legitimate son, the courts will have to decide. Three years of residency in the country are required before Adelaide has standing. She and Richard move into a shabby tenement and start the clock.
Adelaide’s next three years are filled with drudgery, ill health, and poor food. Richard takes on pupils—he has his father’s gift for languages—but he’s so mild that his students torment him, so timid that he often goes unpaid. Edwin might actually like Richard if he knew him. Of all Father’s children, it seems possible that Edwin and Richard are the most alike.
But Edwin doesn’t know him, knows only that Adelaide Booth is a street brawler and that they can’t all be Father’s children under the law. It is Richard against himself and June, Rosalie, Asia, Johnny, and Joe.
Back in her tenement, Adelaide drinks steadily. This and tormenting Father’s other family, whom she refers to as the Holmes set, Holmes being Mother’s maiden name, will occupy her for the next three years.
* * *
—
The first year passes. Edwin is moved out of Miss Hyde’s warm little classroom and into the tutelage of Louis Dugas, a retired French naval officer high on discipline and presentation. Edwin excels at history and literature. Nothing is done to fit him for a career in carpentry. That plan is thankfully never mentioned again.
He and John Sleeper enact a schoolroom performance of a scene from Julius Caesar, which his father comes to see and even appears to enjoy. Edwin’s desire to act has never wavered. He has a suspicion that his talents will be best suited to comedy. By now he’s grown into his own sort of popularity, which is to say that among his small circle of friends, in his quiet way, he is liked.
And then, a great change comes.
Edwin is already asleep—at fourteen, it seems he can never sleep or eat enough—when he’s suddenly aware that his mother is seated on the side of his bed, patting his hand. “Come down to the parlor, dear,” she says. She’s whispering so as not to wake Johnny or Joe. “I need to talk to you.”
Outside there is wind and rain. Inside, shadows.
Edwin rises and follows her downstairs in the dark. In spite of her stealth, Johnny comes, too. She takes the seat in front of the fire, Edwin and Johnny at her feet. Edwin seldom really looks at his mother, the woman so beautiful his father left everything to be with her. So he’s surprised by how gingerly she lowers herself to the chair, surprised by how, even in the rosy light of the fire, he sees a slight sag of skin on her neck. She kept her looks through ten pregnancies, four heartbreaks. She’s still beautiful, but the fading has begun.
Johnny puts his head into her lap and she smooths his hair. Edwin is the one she speaks to. “When your father leaves on his next tour,” she says, “you’ll be going with him.”
Johnny raises his head. “I’ll go.”
Johnny is so much quicker than Edwin. Edwin hasn’t even begun to take in what’s being asked. “What about school?”
“You’ll still go to school. Whenever you’re home in Baltimore,” Mother says.
What if you were suddenly offered everything you ever wanted, but the offer came in a voice so sad, with a face so sorry, it made you wonder if you’d ever wanted it at all?
“I’ll go,” says Johnny. “Ned’s better at school than I am.”
“My love, you’re much too young,” Mother tells him. She will never send Johnny away. Edwin, on the other hand . . . To Edwin, it feels as if Mother is opening the front door and thrusting him out into the storm.