And yet, clearly Miss Woolsey imagines this preposterous story will amuse Asia. Asia climbs back into her saddle, adjusts her skirts about her ankles, and gives Fanny’s reins a quick shake. She canters off without another word, which is rude, and no doubt, Miss Woolsey will call it so to all and sundry, but less rude than what Asia would have said if she’d spoken.
Similar conversations follow, ambushing Asia in places and times where she’d thought herself safe. So many of the neighbors now wish to share their recollections of Father, the closest, Asia thinks, that they will ever come to greatness, yet they rarely acknowledge his iconic roles, his towering genius. Most never even saw him act.
No, they all want to repeat the old salacious stories Asia had hoped were now forgotten. The things they say are fantastical, completely untrue, and yet there they stand, all of them swearing to have witnessed it personally. Asia hears again the story in which Father tries to raise his pony from the dead, but also of his attempts to do the same for his daughter. In this second story, Father digs up Mary Ann’s grave, opens her coffin, slices into her arm, and drinks her blood.
Asia finds Rosalie in the kitchen, sitting with Ann Hall and her daughter Nancy. Old Mrs. Preston has just sold Nancy to Joe and Ann for a dollar and Ann has scarcely let Nancy out of her sight since. Slowly, laboriously, Ann is gathering in her children.
Nancy’s seated at the table, her little head wrapped in a green scarf, eating a large piece of bread with sugar on it. The two women are seeding tomatoes, both of them up to their elbows in gore, great pots of water steaming on the stove. Asia doesn’t want to talk about blood-sucking in front of little Nancy, so she pulls Rosalie into the parlor, repeats the story about Mary Ann, and appeals to Rosalie, as an eyewitness herself, to refute it. “There was no drinking of blood,” Rosalie says, and then returns with her heavy step to the kitchen. This is the saddest excuse for a rebuttal Asia can even imagine. Its smallness makes her angry. If his own children don’t vigorously counter these tales, who will?
The job falls to John. “I can’t understand why it pleases sensible people to concoct ridiculous stories about great actors,” he says on one occasion. And on another, “Don’t bring damnation on yourself by swearing to the truth of your anecdotes.” On a third, he laments the effort forced on him, to laugh politely in the right places while pretending to believe a great whacking pack of lies.
A relatively benign story in which Father is fishing, falls in, and has to leg it dripping wet for the theater, makes John explode. “If you’d actually known my father,” he says, “you’d know he never fished. He considered fishing a kind of murder.” Asia feels that John has successfully shown up the raconteur as a liar. But he’s also, unwittingly, added to the general sense that their father was some kind of lunatic.
* * *
—
An old acting friend of Father’s suggests that Asia and John write a biography. “Someone is bound to do it soon,” he says, “so you must be there first. Otherwise, these ludicrous tales will be set down as real.”
Asia is instantly enthused. She’s a good writer; she enjoys it. She has a hundred memories of Father’s kindness, his generosity. She remembers how he once made her apologize to a servant for some careless words. How he forced her to sit at the bedside of a Negro woman as she lay ill, forced her to kiss the woman’s hand on leaving. How he might bring the dirtiest beggar into the house to be fed.
She begins that very evening, by writing down everything she remembers of the first time she saw her father onstage. She was a girl of ten, and one day, she was given permission to call on a schoolmate named Pearl. Pearl was beautiful. Every night, her mother wrapped her shiny brown hair around her fingers and tied it with rags to make long sausage curls. Pearl was older by months and taller by inches, the daughter of traveling actors, with a confidence and sophistication beyond her years. Asia desperately wished for her approval. She also wished for her hair.
Pearl was staying with her parents in a boardinghouse frequented by actors as it shared a wall with the Baltimore Museum, which was a museum set inside a theater or else a theater set inside a museum, depending on where one’s interests lay. The easy access between the boardinghouse and the theater meant that an actor might slip home for a cup of tea at intermission and be back when the curtain next rose. Asia was about to learn that access between the two buildings was even easier than she’d imagined.
An afternoon of dolls and tea parties came to a late end and it was already full dark before Mink, the hired man, arrived to take Asia home. “Why don’t you go see your father in Richard III instead?” Pearl suggested in a whisper.
Asia knew her father was performing that night, but hadn’t realized he’d be right next door. It made no difference. “I’m not allowed.”
“What a baby you are, Booth!” Pearl seized her hand and Asia let herself be pulled. “Asia is staying the night,” Pearl called down to Mink. “You can go.” And then, in case her mother came to her bedroom door to investigate, said loudly, “Let’s go up and kiss the dollies good-night.”
They climbed the staircase past the doorways of the rented rooms. The steps were high and hard for Asia’s short legs and by the time they reached the garrets, she was gasping. “How much further?”
“To the loft.” Pearl had already gone ahead. Asia could see her petticoats swinging above the bottoms of her buttoned shoes. At the top of the final staircase, there was a little square door, so small Asia would have to duck and wiggle her way in. Pearl slid it open and pushed from behind. Asia found herself in the dark upper gallery of the theater, up behind the cheap seats, in amongst the rough crowd.
The stage was tiny beneath them. “Take up the sword again, or take up me.” Her father was kneeling before a beautiful woman, his voice like music.
The woman answered him. “No! Though I wish thy death, I will not be thy executioner.”
Her father stood. “Then bid me kill myself, and I will do it.”
“Isn’t he wonderful?” Pearl whispered. “He will make your hair stand on end before he’s done.” She reached out for Asia’s hand.
Asia, wearing her cloak, was horribly hot. Her hand, in Pearl’s, began to sweat. But she didn’t care. Below her, past the forest of men’s heads and ladies’ hats, there on the stage, all wrapped in light, was her father not being her father. Asia felt so many things—pride, wonderment, the sorrow of the characters, the majesty of the language in her father’s mouth, her anxiety over not having gone home and the punishment that would surely follow. And more. Her body was too small to contain it all. Pearl stayed with her right through Richard’s death.
But the minute the applause began, Pearl sprang away. “I’m supposed to be sleeping in my bed,” she said. “I’ll catch jesse if they find out I opened the trap. I’ll be whipped for sure.” She turned to exit back the way they’d come. But she wouldn’t let Asia follow. “No, no,” she said. “My mother mustn’t see you! You go downstairs with the crowd. Your father will come out eventually through the big doors to the street. Wait for him there. It couldn’t be simpler.” And she left just that quickly, fastening the little door behind her.