The baby has lodged its head against Asia’s pelvic bone. “All we need,” the doctor says, “is for Baby to tuck its chin.”
Baby does nothing of the sort. Asia is given more opium. She’s rigid with pain and exhaustion, and also hungry. Her throat is raw.
Finally, the doctor grows tired of waiting. He reaches one horrid, enormous hand inside her, rummaging about, while the other bears down onto her stomach. Mother sobs quietly beside the bed. Asia feels the baby being shoved back inside and thinks they’ve decided not to have it, after all. This seems a good decision and perhaps the only way she’ll survive this.
But then, finally, the baby slides downward, and, with a great deal more effort and pain, in a tidal wave of gore and shit, Asia Dorothy Clarke （they’ll call her Dolly） enters the world. Everyone—Mother, Rosalie, Asia, and the baby—is crying. The nurse washes little Dolly and passes her over, wrapped in flannel, squinting and howling. She’s wrinkled and red and hideous. Asia’s first thought is that she’s embarrassed to show her to Sleeper. After all that work! Her second thought is that she would die before she let anything hurt this tiny person. Dolly stares into Asia’s eyes. So this is what love feels like, Asia thinks. That’s her third thought. Dolly nuzzles about her breast, but before she latches, Asia is already asleep.
xvii
Dolly’s an active baby, prone to runny noses and sleepless nights. Asia spends hours holding her in the rocking chair, the only light filtered in from the street outside. She’s mesmerized by the kaleidoscope of Dolly’s expressions—fear, worry, joy—a full rehearsal for the day when they’ll be attached to actual emotions. After her unpromising debut, she’s turned so pretty. Asia doesn’t suppose there ever was a prettier child.
She fits perfectly in Asia’s lap, her head on Asia’s knees, her toes digging into Asia’s collapsed stomach. When a fever lays Asia low for a few weeks, she misses that dimly lit time in the rocking chair. Becky, the nursemaid, takes over the nighttime shift, feeding Dolly with a bottle, and by the time Asia recovers, her milk is gone.
She celebrates her wedding anniversary. So much has changed in a year. Asia’s a wife and a mother now and her role as sister is relegated to her lesser tasks. This might not have happened if she and Edwin hadn’t grown so cold, if John weren’t always so far away.
The Booths are all moving about these days. Edwin is on tour, as usual, and Joe is accompanying him, performing the tasks Edwin once performed for Father. This is a temporary arrangement as Joe will soon be leaving for Charlotte, South Carolina, where he’s enrolled in medical school.
Edwin rents a place in Philadelphia for himself and Mary, though they’re not even married yet. Mother and Rosalie move in immediately, which makes Asia suspicious that Rosalie asked Edwin for a house. She can just imagine the way Rosalie and Edwin must whisper about her behind her back.
Rosalie and Asia have been sniping at each other over trivial, daily annoyances for weeks. Even Mother’s legendary patience has been tried. Asia is glad when they leave. And also hurt. She doesn’t mind so much for herself—no truer expression than familiarity breeds contempt. But she’s surprised they’re willing to leave Dolly.
She’s hurt that they’re willing to miss even a day of the Dolly show.
This evidence that Mother plans to keep house with the despicable Mary Devlin is another blow. Obviously, Asia’s the only one who cares about the family name. She can’t, all by herself, protect the great reputation of the Booths.
But she’ll also soon be moving. Sleeper’s found a place in the country, which he’s in the process of enlarging. Asia looks forward to living with frogs and bees and rabbits again. She hopes that she’ll be able to ride by then. It will be like being back on the farm only without the horrid farming.
Meanwhile, John is tiring of the Marshall Theatre. He tells Asia the city is too easily pleased by his performances and he’s come to believe their enthusiasm is once again for the memory of Father and not for his own accomplishments. There are additional considerations he doesn’t share with Asia. He’s entangled himself with more than one young woman—actresses and prostitutes. He’s made proposals he won’t honor, promises he won’t keep. And he has debts. He’s unwilling to live on his income and too proud to ask Edwin for an allowance.
Edwin helps in other ways. He persuades Matthew Canning, a manager from Philadelphia, to take John on. Canning stipulates only that John must perform under the Booth name, to which John agrees and then does not do. He’s making his move now from stock player to star. He begins to tour. His emotional attachment to Richmond, however, remains potent. Even more than Baltimore, Richmond is the city of his heart.
* * *
—
“My head is full of Marry Mary marry marriage,” Edwin says to everyone who is not Asia. Asia is pretending an unlikely concern over the feelings of Adam Badeau. Poor Adam—wandering alone and forlorn. Quite given up. Undone by Edwin’s cruelty.
Adam is threatening a retaliatory marriage himself. He’s chosen a woman educated in the French way, which he explains to Mary means a woman without a heart. Mary is distressed by this vision of marriage, so he offers a bizarre counter proposal: He’ll forgo his own wedding, if only Edwin will agree to play London.
Edwin already has plans to do this so it’s an easy promise to make. The woman with no heart is saved.
On July 7th, in New York City, Edwin and Mary are wed. It’s a short ceremony on a gold and silver summer morning. Mary wears a crown of white flowers, her hair loosely knotted low on her neck, tears of joy dampening her face.
Few are in attendance. Not Mother, not Rosalie, not Joe, certainly not Asia—only John is there, and Adam. Adam’s touched to see John’s unabashed happiness for Edwin; how he throws his arms around his brother and kisses him. Asia hears this and thinks that she is glad, glad, glad not to have been a witness. Her whole family is made up of fools.
For their wedding trip, the couple rents a house on the Canadian side of Niagara. Niagara, where Asia was once so happy, is being taken away and given to Mary instead. Edwin invites Mother and Joe to join them.
Asia goes out into the mild summer evening, pushing Dolly’s pram through the square. The sparrows and pigeons are hopping about as the glare of day shades into a rosy twilight. Dolly’s hand has made it into her mouth. Sometimes her sucking is so loud, Asia can hear it over the sound of the pram wheels.
She’s thinking about that happy trip to Niagara. It wasn’t all that long ago and yet, in her own memory, she seems like such a girl. She remembers the godlike feelings she had looking down on the Falls, that sense of perspective and power. She remembers the rainbows hovering about the water by the dozens. The cup to Asia, Edwin had said, but maybe he’d never meant it, maybe he’s never loved her the way she’s loved him.
* * *
—
The third guest in Niagara is Adam. He says that both Edwin and Mary are taking pains to prove that their affection for him is unchanged. But this is a story for public consumption. In fact, tensions are rising. Mary is that much more sure of her claim on Edwin, which makes her bold enough to say openly to him that Adam’s a bit of a bore. Adam talks and talks and talks over anyone who might redirect the conversation. He’s far too interested in hearing his own opinions. What a shame he’s not “like other men,” she tells Edwin, “for then your friendship could be secure.” Implying that since he’s not, it’s not.