Hester(22)
There’s a night when I think to tell all of this to Edward—I do not intend to ask his permission—but he’s brought home a cask of rum and is sipping from a tin cup as he turns the pages of his thick reference book, murmuring to himself. Clink—I hear the cask against the cup. Clink. I know there is a point at which Edward will become drunk, but he will want more, and still more.
“Edward, I’ll make you a cup of tea and we’ll go to bed.”
I let my dress drop, for having him hover above me with his rum breath is better than watching him empty the cask and keep me up through the night.
He pushes away his book and looks at me with a strange expression. I’ve never presented myself to him in this way and am afraid of what he’ll say.
But he says nothing. He drains his cup, extinguishes the candle, and takes me to our bed. In the morning when he’s left for town, I pull the cork from his rum and pour what remains into the ground.
* * *
THE THIRTEENTH OF March is a crisp and sunny Friday, just three days before the New Harmony’s scheduled departure. With basket and notebook in hand, chatelaine at my waist, and a gold piece in the pocket beneath my skirt, I walk into town with the happy task of assembling materials for a new dress.
The proprietor nods when I enter Blackwell’s Store House on Essex Street, where two ladies are inquiring about velvet piping and trim to update a Sunday dress. The storehouse is brimming with trunks and crates stacked with fabrics and trays upon trays of buttons in every shape, size, and color. As I make my way toward a blue-gray cotton at the rear of the shop, I spy a man seated on a barrel tucked into a corner. He’s writing in a notebook open in his lap, and he doesn’t look up.
It is Nat Hathorne.
I step back to take my measure of him: dark hair combed rakishly behind his ears; long body folded at a strange angle so that he can bend over the page and write. Hunched in this way, he seems more vulnerable than he first appeared—vulnerable, yet still impenetrable. A man of letters and books, but also of yearning and mystery.
“Mrs. and Miss Hathorne, I’m sure we can find a suitable price,” the proprietor says to the ladies.
Hathorne keeps his head bent, pencil moving. I run my hand over a pile of soft cloth and envy the haze of his concentration, the singularity of it. I think he must be a poet, for only a poet could be so lost in words on a page. As for the soft violet haze that seems to surround him, I’ve only seen such a haze once before, when Mam was working on a memorial sampler for her parents. Like Mam on that day, it seems the man is deep in his own enchanted world. I’d like to step into the enchantment with him, to be held in the flicker of light and shadow in his face.
When Blackwell says something to make the ladies laugh, Hathorne’s pencil stops and he looks off to the right. My heart jolts and I fade to the back of the store, keeping out of his sight as the women pay for their goods and have them wrapped.
Only after the doorbell rings behind them do I let out a sigh and pull open a drawer full of buttons.
“Ladies do like their buttons.”
It’s him, his words a royal parade of faded red and gold. The room with its rich piles of colored cloth seems to spin slowly as my hand flutters over a tray of exotic buttons.
He’s so close I can smell horses and fire on him. His clothes are those of a gentleman, worn but well cut. He’s slung his long cape over his shoulders and it is too long and rich for the rest of his garb. I don’t know if he’s wearing the cape with some irony—knowing it’s too grand—or if he thinks it suits him. Perhaps a bit of both, I think, for he has the bearing of a man who is aware of the dramatic figure he cuts.
He reaches for a scrimshaw ivory button carved with a delicate hibiscus flower.
“This one is exquisite.” He holds out his hand, and I put out my open palm. His fingers are stained with black ink like my father’s.
“I have an eye for beauty,” he says. I keep my eyes on the button, and when he pours it from his hand into mine, I feel a current between us. “Though I don’t often see it in such fine and exquisite form,” he adds.
My throat is tight. I see hair on the backs of his knuckles, the worn cuff of his cotton coat.
“Where do you suppose it was made?” I ask.
“Ireland?”
Confused, I look up at last. His face is very pleasing, with a high forehead and deep-set eyes. There’s nothing of the fire in them today. They’re cool and penetrating, and behind that is something timid, I am sure of it. Yet he stands close. How much time passes as we look at one another I cannot say—perhaps it’s the snap of two fingers. Perhaps it’s a full stanza of poetry.
“I saw you get off the ship with your father,” he says. “With your red hair and brogue, I guessed you must be an Irish girl.”
He’s mistaken me for a maiden without a husband. I have a choice, and I do not correct him.
“Scotland,” I say. “Scottish, not Irish.”
“Ah.” He tips his head and indicates the trio of buttons. “If you admire exotic and enchanting things, you should visit the East India Marine Society Hall. Our ship captains collect treasures from around the world and bring them home to Salem—carved figurines, voodoo dolls, ornaments and costumes made of shells and coral.”
Just then the store bell rings and one of his companions pokes her head through the doorway.