The Flaming Corsage

by William Kennedy

  Katrina always thought of Archie when she remembered what Henry James had told Edward and her during their luncheon in New York in 1903. When he thought of Albany, Henry said, he remembered his father’s stories about his own contemporaries, all of them men with great promise and romantic charm, all of them, in his father’s eyes, eventually ending badly, as badly as possible.

  “Oh dear, Archie,” she said as she sat beside his desk, “this is a sad errand. I closed Mother’s house last night.”

  “How is she?”

  “Depressed. But the good of it is she no longer has to fear foreclosure. She’ll do fine in the apartment. And she’s still in the old neighborhood.”

  “I knew it was happening,” Archie said. “Such a pity. Such a magnificent house it was.”

  “I’ve taken a few pieces of special memory, but the rest is off to be auctioned. I bring valuables for our box in your vault. Mother had a safe for them at home, but I do not.”

  As he prepared the paper for her to sign, Katrina saw the descending panorama of Archie’s entire life, culminating in the whiskey-blotch of his face; and she realized precisely how this, too, had happened. She would have to tell him.

  “We’ll go in now,” Archie said, and together they walked across the bank to the armed guard, and Archie presented him with Katrina’s identification card; and they entered. Katrina left her bag on the table in the coupon room, and walked into the great vault of the bank with Archie. Together they opened the combination lock on the Daugherty safe deposit box, and Katrina carried the box back to the table.

  “I’ll be a few minutes with this,” she said.

  “Ring the wall buzzer and I’ll come back,” Archie said.

  She took the jewel case out of her bag and placed all that was in it on the table: her mother’s diamond tiara, the silver cream pitcher from the Cromwell tea service, a pair of gold cuff links inscribed with her father’s initials in Old English script, two gold rings she and Adelaide had outgrown in childhood, the single strand of pearls Lyman had given Geraldine on her sixteenth birthday, and a miscellany of gold and silver bracelets that might not be gold and silver, since Geraldine had yielded most jewelry of value to rescue her husband from debt. This was what remained of the Taylor fortune, excepting what would come from the auction and the sale of the house, some of which would clear her mother’s debt to tradesmen, doctors, and lawyers, the rest to go into the trust fund that would pay for Geraldine’s modest room and board for the rest of her life. The melancholy management of reduced expectations.

  Katrina took two silk scarves from her bag, wrapped the tiara, pitcher, and cuff links (a set of rainy-day surprises for Edward) in one, the rest of the items in the other. She saw that, as now packed, the deposit box would not accept all she wanted to put into it. She took out the family documents, their birth certificates, and the endowment agreement under which Lyman gave an annuity to Edward, the deeds to the Colonie Street house and the Daugherty house on Main Street, and two plays by Edward she had copied and put here for safekeeping without his knowing: Pyramus and Thisbe, which had since been published and no longer needed to be here, and Lunar Majesty, his play about a woman’s courtship, marriage, and early estrangement from her husband. Katrina cherished this play for its compassion and insight—into her, of course—she the enduring heroine of all of Edward’s works. She opened the manuscript to a page and read:

  THE HUSBAND: I’m convinced she’s walled in behind the energy of her derangement, sane as anyone alive, mad as the queen of Bedlam—the stigmata, the sickness, the lesions visible in her eyes and the clutch of her hand. Such a marvel of womanhood, as pure and as fated as Eve before the serpent.

  “A bit overstated, Edward,” Katrina said aloud.

  Then she closed the manuscript, laid it flat in the deposit box, arranged the diaries atop it, then put in the jewels wrapped in their scarves. She folded Pyramus and Thisbe into her leather bag, closed the box, and rang the buzzer for Archie. He was waiting outside the door. Together they reentered the vault, secured the box in its place, and left the vault.

  “I saw my father last night at the house,” Katrina said as they went out.

  Archie stopped, looked at her, took off his pince-nez.

  “I was standing in his office,” she said, “and I realized he was in the cellar. I went down with a candle and found him sitting on a stool by the pipe where the city water comes in. The pipe was dripping water onto his shoulder. He was wearing his small spectacles and an old overcoat, which was quite wet. He was hunched over and looked very pitiful. We stared at each other until I summoned the courage to say, ‘I would take you upstairs, Father, but there’s nothing up there now.’ He continued to stare at me, and the water dripped onto his unruly hair.”

  Archie looked away from Katrina, spoke to the floor.

  “You know, Katrina, of course you know, that your father is dead. You were at his burial.”

  “Of course I was, of course I know that.”

  “I suppose these things can happen.”

  “Father blamed Edward for Adelaide’s death, but I was the one. Edward was only doing what he knew I wanted.”

  “You can’t blame yourself for such things, Katrina. You seem a bit skewed today, frankly. You should see a doctor.”

  “I’m very clear on it, Archie. I truly am.”

  Her voice was as bright as morning.

  “If I hadn’t been what I was, Edward and I wouldn’t have needed to make peace with the family. If we all hadn’t gone to that dinner of reconciliation, Adelaide and my father wouldn’t have died, and you wouldn’t have ruined your career with drink.”

  “I have hardly done that, Katrina. You are ill.”

  “It’s you who are ill, Archie, and I’m sorry I had a hand in it.”

  “You’ll soon be taking blame for the weather.”

  “Perhaps I shall. It’s quite uncanny what one sets in motion by being oneself.”

  She stood up and extended her hand.

  “Thank you so much, Archie. I must go up to the Hall now and see a bit of the dress rehearsal of Edward’s play.”

  “Yes, I saw a notice in the paper.”

  “I believe he’s written the tragedy of our lives. And do stop drinking, Archie. You’re such a good man without it.”

  “You should learn to mind your own business, Katrina.”

  “Yes, I suppose I should. But I have so very little business to mind.”

  She sits alone at the rear of the orchestra

  In Harmanus Bleecker Hall,

  Albany’s premier

  Theater

  She sees only Act Four, Scene One

  The text of the scene:

  The City Club Tea Room on Elk Street (ladies only), summer, 1910. One round white wicker table, two matching chairs, one potted palm tree in white pot.

  MARINA and CLARISSA are seated at table with white lamp with white shade, a pot of tea, two cups and saucers, spoons, two small plates, and, in the center of the table, a plate of small sandwiches made from white bread with crusts removed.

  Both women are elegantly dressed in long, white dresses with colossal hats. marina’s hat is a garden of puffy white ostrich plumes. Clarissa’s hat is a circular fountain of long, narrow white feathers.

  MARINA: Will you have tea?

  CLARISSA: If you please.

  (Marina pours tea into both cups.)

  You must wonder about my letter.

  MARINA: Not at all.

  CLARISSA: I thought it important to write you.

  MARINA: Did you? Why was that?

  CLARISSA: I thought we should discuss Miles.

  MARINA: Did you? Why was that?

  CLARISSA: He was so odd.

  MARINA: You’re absolutely right. Shooting his wife that way. Then shooting himself. Odd.

  (Marina sips her tea, holds cup in air.)

  Miles suffered from an excess of fastidiousness.

  (She sips tea again, puts cup down.)

 
He was appalled by its absence in others.

  CLARISSA: Miles was quite wrong about one thing. He thought his wife and your husband were paramours.

  MARINA: But it was you and my husband who were paramours.

  CLARISSA: We were the best of friends.

  MARINA: And now that’s all past. Now Miles is dead and my husband considers you a well-poisoner.

  CLARISSA: I understand your anger.

  MARINA: My anger faded long ago, replaced by other emotions.

  CLARISSA: I won’t ask what they are.

  MARINA: I’m not sure I could say what they are. They’re quite mysterious.

  CLARISSA: Your husband thinks me a well-poisoner?

  MARINA: He blames himself, but thinks you spawned the disaster.

  CLARISSA: How does he think I did that?

  MARINA: Through Mangan, who conceived the plot to expose your love nest, the most successful creative act of his life.

  (She sips her tea.)

  CLARISSA: Mangan never forgave Miles for the fireman’s-wife joke.

  MARINA: Nonsense.

  CLARISSA: He was so humiliated.

  MARINA: Mangan is unhumiliatible.

  CLARISSA: Mangan is really quite sensitive.

  MARINA: Mangan lacks fastidiousness.

  (Pause.)

  He told me you were his constant paramour, even when you were seeing my husband. Dreadful to reveal such things.

  CLARISSA: Did Mangan say that?

  (She sips her tea.)

  He’s such a liar.

  MARINA: He did not seem to be lying.

  (She proffers plate of sandwiches.)

  Sandwich?

  CLARISSA: Thank you.

  (Clarissa takes sandwich, bites it.)

  Delicious.

  (Marina takes sandwich from plate and smells it.)

  MARINA: Raw fish. How repellent.

  (She puts sandwich on her own plate, wipes her fingers with napkin.)

  Mangan has always envied my husband. They were like brothers once, but he envied my husband’s social position, envied his marrying me, envied his success in the theater, envied his self-possession.

  (Pause.)

  My husband was the true target in the love-nest conspiracy, not poor, simple Miles.

  (She lifts teapot.)

  Tea?

  CLARISSA: If you please.

  (Marina pours tea.)

  Mangan told me he once had Miles’s wife. In a Pullman compartment on the train from Albany to New York.

  MARINA: I did say Mangan lacked fastidiousness, did I not?

  CLARISSA: But he does seem to know things.

  (Pause.)

  He told me you took a seventeen-year-old neighbor boy as the light of your life.

  (She sips her tea.)

  He believes there is no such thing as fidelity. “The fidelity fallacy,” he calls it.

  MARINA: He stole that phrase from a speech in my husband’s unfinished play. Do you know the rest of that speech? “No one understands the disease of infidelity until it’s upon you. And then you are transfigured. Of course you have your reasons for what you do, but they are generally misleading.”

  (She sips her tea.)

  Quite an accurate speech, wouldn’t you say?

  CLARISSA: I’m sure you know better than I. Mangan also told me he had you, two days after the shooting.

  MARINA: He tried often with me, but never succeeded. I’m not as diverse as you in these matters.

  CLARISSA: You have such lofty airs.

  MARINA: And you are from womanhood’s lowest register. You linked yourself to my husband when he was a rising star, and now, after you’ve risen on his back, you want to destroy what remains of his life as a fallen star.

  CLARISSA: I loved him truly.

  MARINA: You began as a frivolous soubrette, full of intrigue, and in short order you’ve risen to become a sublime slut. Do your sluttish things, as you must, but don’t speak to me of love.

  (Marina picks up teapot.)

  Love is vertical. You are relentlessly horizontal.

  (She proffers teapot.)

  More tea?

  HE MAKES ME cleverer than I am. He knows things I do not know about Maginn. I don’t know how he knew Maginn came to see me, and I doubt very much Maginn had Felicity in a Pullman. She wouldn’t. Would she? Edward believes he knows the truth about my life without him. “I know of your dalliances,” he once said. “Of course you don’t,” I told him. He will come to know some of what was. His writing is acute, and bright people will admire it, but the clergy will try to have the play closed. No one can say such things publicly. Edward knows this. He is flaunting his play “You made me the villainous eater of broken meats,” he is saying. “Here then, see what raw fish such a man offers you.”

  He is obviously finished with that woman. I do like the well-poisoner line. I wish I had said it. He is giving a shape to the chaos that overtook us. What he said at dinner – when the matter is ready the form will come. I wonder did he see me sitting in the theater? He did not come down. Perhaps he thought I would go backstage. No. He would assume I would not wish to confront them all. He must not have seen me. Nonsense, if he thought I could not face up to people. I’ve recovered. I’ve recovered from everything. It’s depressing how total my recovery is; as if the condition had not been serious. No one can know what the wound was like. No one would care to know. Even Edward could see only the blood, the scab, the scar. There will be a photograph of my recovery. It’s depressing how easily we reconcile the unthinkable. I must let Edward know why I never told him about Giles, and Maginn’s doggerel. How to tell him? I want no argument. Tell him also what no one ever knew about Felicity. But I saw it. Tell Edward these things now. Yes. Answer all questions. What was I supposed to do with my life? Was it correct, what I did? Was it worth doing? Write him a letter. A letter, of course. When the matter is ready the form will come.

  She left the theater and walked to the cabstand in front of the Armory, full of the memory of significant life on the Hall’s grand stage. There she had seen Caruso and Pavlova and met John McCormack after he’d thrilled her with that old ballad (“Oh! hast thou forgotten how soon we must sever? Oh! hast thou forgotten this day we must part?”). She had watched Duse and Maude Adams and Richard Mansfield and countless others play out their charades of life, she had danced with Edward on the false floor that covered the theater seats for Governor Roosevelt’s inaugural ball. And this week Edward’s people, you among them, Katrina, will come to life on that enormous stage. And everyone’s legend will grow.

  Katrina’s hat was so large that she had to tip her head sideways in order to step into the cab.

  She entered her empty house, the servants gone until dinner, and left her bag and her hat in the drawing room. She made tea for herself in the kitchen and carried it on a tray to Edward’s office, where she set it atop his desk. She sat in Edward’s chair and took one of his lined tablets from the drawer. She sipped the tea as she considered the questions she would write answers to on the tablet.

  “What, really, was my destiny?” she wrote.

  She put her head down on the desk in acquiescence to the drowsiness the question evoked in her. She slept for she knew not how long, and awoke smelling smoke. She went to the window of the office and parted the curtains to see the Christian Brothers school next door in flames. It was clear to her that the fire would make the leap to this room in a matter of minutes. She went back to Edward’s chair and put her head down on his desk. The smoke was familiar in her mouth. She had breathed fire before.

  AFTER THE HOUSE burned, and Katrina died in his arms, Edward moved what was left of his life into a parlor suite at the Kenmore Hotel and began the process of gently evicting the Cohallon family from Emmett and Hanorah’s Main Street house: his house now, his only house now. He put Katrina in the hands of Ebel Campion, whose undertaking parlors were only two blocks from where she died, with instructions that there would be no wake, only a funeral mass i
n Sacred Heart church, and then private burial. He would not abide strangers ogling her corpse.

  The buzzards were already at work on the leftover carrion from the Love Nest scandal, writing how the debauchery of the ogre Daugherty had shamed Katrina, hastened her death; and cheering—were they not?—for the innocent Melissa, who had replied to the evil done her by gaining much-deserved movie stardom. There they perched, at the edge of Edward’s life, anticipating new morsels from The Flaming Corsage, which would open May 11, the fourth day after Katrina’s death; for the show must go on now, Mr. Ogre, or not at all.

  Sacred Heart church was filled, even to standing room, and hundreds more jammed the church steps, and Walter Street’s sidewalk, twenty minutes before the small cortege arrived. Six bearers carried Katrina’s coffin up the steps into the church, photographers recording her ascent, then moving their tripods to focus on Edward, impeccably tailored in black suit with cutaway coat and beaver hat, stepping down from the first carriage, with Martin next, dressed like his father, and then the heavily veiled Geraldine, triadic study in family distance. Geraldine’s brother, Ariel, and Archie Van Slyke came in the second carriage, then other relatives, friends.

  As they entered the church in procession, Edward saw, first, the blaze of color on the altar: the dozen baskets of yellow flowers he had sent to brighten the solemnity for Katrina, then saw, with sharper focus, faces from North Albany, Colonie Street, Elk Street: Francis and Annie Phelan, and old Iron Joe with them; and Jack and Ruthie McCall, she refusing to measure his eye; and the Phelans: Peter, Chick, Molly, and Tommy, all in one pew; and Bishop Sloane, flanked by a brace of Minor Canons, bowing ecclesiastically to Geraldine as she passed him; and so many, many more neighbors and forever-nameless witnesses to the lamentable truth: that Katrina Selene Taylor Daugherty is no more.

  Father Loonan, without the stamina to say mass, sat in trembling witness on the altar, as Edward had asked of him: Katrina’s counselor in the faith when she converted. Three other priests would celebrate Katrina’s passing with a solemn high mass, and Father Loonan, at the proper moment, feeble but clear of speech, and wearing his simple cassock and surplice, would stand and read the Gospel, not only from the mass for the dead, but also from the mass for the previous day on the liturgical calendar, as if the two Gospels were one; and Edward found the addition of the latter Gospel more than accidental redundancy: “. . . You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt lose its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is good for nothing any more, but to be cast out, and to be trodden on by men. You are the light of the world. A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but upon a candle-stick, that it may shine to all that are in the house . . .”