The House of Hawthorne (7 page)

A force within my artist’s soul responds to what I see. It seems as if all human pain and weakness lie here in this fallen woman. All she has left is her prayer, and the area around her heart is the only place of light on the canvas.

“I do not know how we will fix her,” says Madame Fernandez.

Near the wall where the Magdalene hangs is a table bearing a small bowl of aromatic oils. Someone must have been preparing to clean the painting just before we arrived. I am seized with an urge to touch Magdalene, but first I caress the slick surface of the oil and allow it to coat my fingertips. I lift my hand to the canvas and touch her praying hands with the oil, rubbing in a circular motion outward from the center. When I draw away, Madame Fernandez gasps. The effect is astonishing. Magdalene’s figure has begun to emerge from the darkness. The light of God’s touch transforms her in response to her prayer. I dip my fingers in the
oil again, almost to my wrist, and bring them back to the canvas, wiping away the grime from the entire figure with a flat palm until she may be seen in her whole glorious, pitiful state, a sinner with nothing to offer, yet somehow more beautiful than the most elegant woman.

I can just imagine her prayer.

Change me, Lord, though I am unworthy.

Forever and ever.

They leave me in the room with the painting that afternoon while I contemplate her. Her crimson robes, her porcelain skin, her dazzling eyes. I hold my journal and find myself noting the colors, the details, the emotions the painting evokes. The air between us seems to ignite a small flame in my heart that I allowed to burn out these past weeks.

In my journal, Fernando wrote the sweetest note to me on our last night in each other’s company. He gave homage to our friendship and committed to paper his hopes of a future meeting, though we both knew it would not be so.

I look back at the glimpse of light in the center of Magdalene, near her heart, and remember the beauty to be found even in sorrow—beauty as a result of transformation, an admission of weakness, and a total dependence on the Creator. Even in the darkest hour, our hearts can allow us to see the light.

A thought comes to me, and under Fernando’s gentle script I scribble it.

Infeliz de mí!
I see with the eyes that are given me.

A pledge to always find the good, the beauty, the hope, the light.

Forever and ever.

Spring 1864
Massachusetts

C
uba seems like forever ago from inside this carriage to Boston, where I lean against my Nathaniel and he against me. My time at La Recompensa
shaped both of us, and I now believe we would not be here together if I had not gone. While I lived my visit, and for the first time opened to the possibility of love, Nathaniel relived it in his imagination when he read the
Cuba Journal
, just before our season of courtship. It is where he fell in love with my heart, where some of the characters in his novels were born, where the seeds for a number of his stories were planted, including Rappaccini and his poisonous daughter, and the dreadful likeness of Edward Randolph’s frightening portrait.

I have not allowed myself to remember my stay in Cuba for many moons. Reading through the journal this morning, I could hardly believe these were events I lived. When I first arrived home, I buried the painful memories, and told myself I did so in
the name of preserving the light and my own health on Mother’s behalf, but now I recognize the truth: I was a coward.

Mary was a coward, too, but not for selfish reasons, like me. She often spoke of a novel she wanted to write about our experiences in Cuba, but she feared that it would hurt the Morrells and their children. Mary will wait until the last of them dies before making public the plantation stories that left their scars on us both.

My agitated husband settles against my shoulder, and I breathe in the aroma of his jacket that holds the smoke of pipes and hearths. Nathaniel believes the family hearth is the true heart of harmony in the world. He does all he can to preserve its sacred quiet, and attempts to suppress all disagreement there—a challenge with a damaged daughter like Una. We ride in peace for several miles, and I am just about to drift off from exhaustion of body and spirit when Nathaniel starts and sits up. He presses his breast pocket and reaches in, turning it inside out.

“No,” he says.

“What is it?” I ask in the confusion of interrupted slumber.

He reaches into his side pockets, and groans as he leans forward, feeling in his pants.

“I forgot,” he says. “We must turn back.”

Dread fills me, for we have gone many miles. If we return to the Wayside, the children will be further disturbed. Nathaniel had to be helped to the carriage on Una’s arm, while I consoled our little Rose. When we pulled away, I saw Una bury her face in the crook of her elbow, shuddering from her sobs. We cannot relive that scene.

“What is it?” I say. “I will have it sent to you. What can you need to go back for?”

“Longfellow,” he mumbles. “I need it.”

I think he has gone mad. Is he requesting the stuffed owl from the Old Manse that we named Longfellow after his old friend? A smile touches my lips, because I think for a moment that my husband has found his mischievous humor of old.

“You jest,” I say, and start to again settle in, like a plump dove on a branch, but Nathaniel continues to fidget. I open my eyes and see that he is distressed.

“No, not the owl. I need something. It cannot . . . be sent.”

My poor husband is near tears, and I stare at him for a long moment before I see that he will not be settled until we turn back. I lean out the window with great reluctance and command the driver to return to Concord.

Our emotions are all raw today, but again we are bound for Boston, and Mr. Pierce, and the train they will catch heading north.

I offered to go inside to retrieve Nathaniel’s mysterious package, but he insisted on procuring it himself. I cried quietly, watching my aged love take halting steps back into the Wayside, half-bent from pain, trembling and weak, and reemerge, again needing Una’s assistance to climb back into the carriage. His breast pocket bulged with whatever he had retrieved; I could see that he would not speak of it, and I knew not to ask.

Nathaniel’s glassy eyes remain alert as we travel. He stares across time and mumbles about a fox. I want him to talk to me,
because a dreadful thought is forming in my mind that this could be our last time together on earth. I swallow the lump in my throat and ask him, “What is this fox?”

My voice stirs him from his memories, and he reaches for my hand. I look down and see that our fingers have become gnarled and spotted. How can these be our hands that used to be so strong and soft, yet still fit together as if one were made to hold the other?

“Did I ever tell you about my fox?” he says.

“No, love, I do not think so. Tell me now.”

“It is a sad story. I do not want to upset you.”

“You know that I will find the light in the sadness.”

“Yes,” he says. “In the trip I made alone to New Hampshire, to Mount Washington as a young man, when I took your
Cuba Journal
, I met an ancient fox.”

“The same mountains you will visit with Pierce?”

“Yes. But then I was a strapping lad, though incomplete because I had not yet learned the language of love from my dove.”

I lift his hand to kiss it before placing it back on my lap. How I adore these moments when the stomach pains do not stab Nathaniel, and he is his old self.

“I saw he wanted to die,” he continues. “I knew he wanted to do so alone, but I felt an urge to track him through the understory. His awareness of me impelled his forward progress, but he continued until he reached the crest of a fern-covered hill. He staggered, and then relinquished his power.”

I am able to perfectly visualize this scene, and young Nathaniel in it. I could listen to him speak forever.

“He looked at me sideways where he dropped,” continues my storyteller, “before placing his head on the fallen leaves. I approached slowly so as not to frighten him, though at that stage I imagined the fox feared nothing on this earth. Up close I could see signs of his many years. In all of my forest adventures, I had never seen an aged animal expiring from natural causes, and I was fascinated. White fur surrounded his face and crusted, milky eyes. His white legs and paws were scarred, and his toenails were broken and jagged. Ribs protruded through his flimsy, sagging skin.”

“This is sad,” I say. “But it was good of you to stay with him so he was not alone when he died. No creature should be alone at the final crossing.”

I squeeze Nathaniel’s hand a little tighter. He clears his throat and resumes his tale.

“I do not know if that thought occurred to me at that time, but it seemed important that I sit near him and wave away the flies. I imagined that the fox was grateful, and I followed his gaze to the vista. We were two small mammals in a vast landscape.”

“How very transcendental of you, my sweet,” I tease.

“It was not nature that moved me; you know I am no transcendentalist. It was the feeling of smallness, of isolation, that I craved. How I wish I felt at home in the crowds of Salem, the salons of Boston. Still, when I am in society, I feel their need and hopes on me like an actual physical pressure. They have always wanted more from me than I am willing to give them, but you know that without my having to say it.”

I do. I also sense that sometimes even I am one of this society whom he longs to escape. Company is a burden to those at home in the solitude of their souls.

“Over the valley, a hawk chased a crow away from her nest, and pecked at the scoundrel until it flew away. The hawk cried and circled high above, feathers spread like fingers, soaring in a great arc. She glided close to her nest and then away again, as if pulled in two directions. How she must have relished her moment of freedom. But she swiftly returned to the nest where she was tethered. I remembered wondering if my father felt that way at sea. Pulled to the water while on land, to land while on water, never at home. That is my inheritance—a division of longing.”

Nathaniel’s seafaring father died of fever after an ocean crossing when Nathaniel still had his milk teeth, and his mother mourned the man all her days. The atmosphere of sorrow in which Nathaniel was raised with his two sisters left a permanent darkness within him. His mother’s grief raised a black veil over Nathaniel’s soul that he could never fully remove. I shudder at the thought of widowhood, and nestle closer to my husband. He continues speaking, seeming to gain strength from his storytelling.

“The fox made a noise like a sigh, and I allowed the faces of my brethren to recede. I looked at the old one at my side when he lifted his head. I followed his gaze to the crooked branch that extended over the ravine, where a vulture joined two others. They stared at the fox, who had put his head back down, but turned his eye to me. I gazed into its black recesses for such a time that the shadows moved, the sun made its passage. I waited for the fox’s signal until suddenly there was certainty in my mind
that did not seem to come from me. I pulled my knife from my pocket and sliced a frond of fern to place over his body, a green shroud, and parted the leaves around his heart. I stood over him, drew the arrow from my pack, threaded it in my bow, and shot. The red stained his white fur and spilled to the ground. The hawk again took flight.”

I rub Nathaniel’s wrinkled hand, which put the poor fox from his misery all those years ago. How sad and beautiful it is that our souls are all connected here in this carriage, where time and space seem not to exist.

Soon Nathaniel is resting on my shoulder, exhausted from illness and the journey, but still unable to sleep. I cannot help but stare with fascination at our old hands threaded together, where one cannot be distinguished from the other.

I imagine mixing a dab of paint on a palette to match our flesh. A drop of lead white, a touch of yellow ocher, a hint of crimson swirled together and spread over our skin to transform us into our young selves. I see it with my mind’s eye, and I am borne back to our carriage ride to Concord after our wedding, and then further back, to the days of our prolonged courtship, when I feared we would never truly become one.